


Calling on Favors

by LetaDarnell



Category: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-17
Updated: 2018-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-23 02:02:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 76,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8309494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LetaDarnell/pseuds/LetaDarnell
Summary: Esmeralda gets a bright idea.  Phoebus and the archdeacon get a bad idea. Clopin needs to get a clue.  Jailarity ensues.





	1. Chapter 1

The Feast of Fools had been, to Claude Frollo, exactly that: foolish. Foolish people, foolish stunts, foolish food, foolish everything. 

Frollo had thought that at least his adopted son was hidden safe away in the bell tower where no disasters could be started. This was untrue, but Quasimodo had the decency and intelligence to sneak out while the feast was distracted with itself and stayed where convenient alleys or other escape options were close. 

Nothing actually happened during the festival and so, in essence, nothing happened. During the crowning of the King of Fools, Frollo managed to slip away without notice. If Clopin didn’t find any good candidates, he tried to crown Frollo. So far, the amount of body parts Frollo had broken immediately afterwards wasn’t swaying him in the least. 

For a second he thought he saw someone that reminded him of Quasimodo, but screams and colors made him turn his head and when he turned back, the person was gone. It was either the stress or the alcohol fumes. More and more he was remembering why he hated this day. 

He swore he’d be glad when the day was over. 

……………. 

No one had tried to pickpocket him this time, no drunks had found him to be a convenient spot to throw up on, and he’d managed to avoid women who wanted money for belching as they took their clothes off. 

Half the day was gone and so far the Feast of Fools seemed tolerable. Finally, the sound of what the day was truly about was shouted across the street: ‘Stop thief!’ 

Claude Frollo was not near his horse, which he regretted as he took off in the direction of the shouting. He knocked away every person who was unfortunate not to get out of his way fast enough. The gypsies never admitted to anything that changed his job from anything more than a genocidal murderer; they would remember him crashing over two tables and not lose any speed, not that he was racing to the aid of a woman he’d been struck three times for not giving up her purse and expensive goods. 

Frollo left the woman as she picked herself up. He could help her up after he’d gotten her things back. If he felt like it. 

Chasing after the thief brought him to a cooper’s workshop. Wooden slats in various stages of being grouped up into circles were set aside. Hoops of metal leaned against the walls of the workshop. 

Claude wandered inside cautiously, seeing no one. He pulled out his dagger and took two more tentative steps. He knew how this trick worked. It wasn’t a very smart trick, but one still had to know how to handle it. 

The door to the workshop slammed shut and Claude spun around and aimed his dagger and slammed it down squarely at his foe. However, this version of the trick was new. He jumped back as he released the dagger, trying to avoid an attack towards his chest. The attack, however, wasn’t aimed at his chest as usual. It was aimed at his legs. 

Thankfully he’d backed away or the blow would have torn his leg away. Still, the hammer strike against his knee smashed open his leg and sent his entire leg into a bloody searing hell of pain. 

His attacker staggered, Claude’s blade buried deep in his shoulder, taking away most of the use of that arm. 

Claude was on the ground, trying to tear his robes from his injured leg, but the blood was running thick and sticky. He gave up on trying to untangle himself as his attacker tried to hit him again with the odd-angled hammer. He shoved himself backwards on his hands and his good leg. The man pulled back for another swing. Claude grabbed one of the heavy hoops from a wall, sending the other hoops and several slats of wood falling toward his attacker. In consequence, the hammer swing was not thrown far enough and only managed to knock his hat off. 

Claude took the hoop in both hands and swung it recklessly, letting loose as he began to lose his balance and fall backwards. The hoop smashed into his attacker’s face, the hammer drawn back for another blow and was nowhere to be used as defense. 

Claude lay on the dirt floor and winced as he willed the pain in his knee to subside enough for him to know if he had hit his head too hard falling backwards. From behind his closed eyelids, he noticed the lighting in the workshop change. 

His eyes flew open, fearing his attacker had survived and his attempt to defend himself had done nothing. Instead, Claude was blinking as the bright sunlight hurt his eyes and a dark silhouette started shoving something heavy and groaning away from the door in order to let himself and more bright sunlight in. 

Claude shoved himself back to an upright position after figuring that his head was fine, just throbbing slightly. Pulling his good knee close, he shuffled the skirt of his robe into a ball and pressed it against his leg. 

Hissing inwardly, he wasn’t sure if the pain increased or merely changed slightly and it was now the colder, stinging pain that he hated. 

He bowed his head and braved a look at his ruined knee. The wound wasn’t deep, but it was gushing a large amount of blood. The bone of the kneecap had been shoved aside and though a few ligaments had been twisted, nothing had been separated. 

Claude heard someone make a noise of disgust from the door. “Looks bad sir,” said the voice of his newly appointed captain. 

Claude put the ball of his robe skirt back to the wound, pressing hard. “Well, don’t gawk, help me up and have that man arrested. And return what he stole to the woman. 

“What are you doing?” Claude yelled as he was hefted up by arm around his torso, lifting him into the air. “I said help me up, not carry me!” 

He was carried out into the sunlight, but thankfully not very far. Phoebus set the minister on his destrier and set the hat on the minister. Angrily, Frollo adjusted his hat, which Phoebus had put on him backwards, and adjusted his side-saddle position on the horse as Phoebus returned the stolen property to the woman. 

“Oh, thank you!” the woman cried, hugging Phoebus hard, despite her bruises. 

“Yes, it was nothing,” Claude said, flatly. He signaled for the horse to move and it trotted off towards the hospice. 

………….. 

The hospice was non-descript and around the back of the cathedral. In a sense, the doctor was very similar in a way. Non-descript, close to the church, but not really there. Jacques, the doctor of that particular hospice, was an unfortunate son of a rather famous midwife. By appearance, it was hard to place his age at all, for he could be well-aged and old or someone young who never got enough sleep for the last year. He looked slightly small and very unimportant compared to most men, and like furniture next to everyone else. His dark hair was flat and dull, his face was just plain dull, and he looked so boring, no one thought twice at seeing blood all over his long white tunic or wide, dark shirt sleeves, even if they didn’t know his profession. 

Jacques had the unfortunate social position as a doctor with no authority and taking care of patients not only panicking, but often stupid as well, the unfortunate look that ranged from far-less-expressive-than-people-will-listen-to to so-boring-people-think-he-just-wandered-in-despite-having-just-cut-your-leg-off-with-a-saw, and the fact that no one not already belonging to one of the groups never figured that the doctor’s most frequent visitors would be from the law or the clergy, most people tended to assume not only was the only way to communicate with him to scream, but to repeat the same sentence over and over. Because of this mixture of sad circumstances, Jacques kept a congenial manner around people until they proved—to his mind—that they were too stupid to dress themselves properly on the first try and then he treated them like a toddler one had to hold down with one’s foot just to wash their face and then insult them until they got the subtle hint that he wanted them to leave and never come back. 

“Jacques?” Claude called out, using the wall of the hospice and his good leg to drag himself inside. The door had been left open and a thick blanket tacked over the doorway to keep the heat from escaping, but aid the fools in traffic this day. Frollo was one of the few people who not only thought Jacque’s hearing was not hindered by the fact that he easily blended into the background, but also respected the man, not just for being smarter than most soldiers, but as someone who could not only save his life, but also as someone skilled at many kinds of sharp objects. 

“For the last time, it’s not my responsibility if you can’t pace yourselves or hold your liquor, now go throw up somewhere—Oh, Sweet Lord!” The doctor yelled, entering from the room where he cleaned his equipment and kept books. 

Jacques was a lot more knowledgeable about dignity than Phoebus. He slid his hands under Claude’s shoulders for the injured man to lean on and led him to one of the beds. Claude centered himself on the bed and Jacques ran to get the proper supplies. 

Jacques was the closest thing Claude had to a friend. Unlike most people in his job, Claude literally threw himself into every aspect of his job, and often it threw something back at him. Jacques swore that if a month went by and Claude didn’t show up—either for himself or dragging someone else in—he was probably dead. 

Jacques had been a priest in the years Claude had served as a scholar and an officer. Jacques’ position, however, became threatened as he began to study anatomy books alongside his holy ones. The man eventually abandoned the church, exchanging his cassock for a beaked mask of a doctor. Claude soon became a regular patient, and thought the change in occupation was an honorable one, a good way to still serve God. The two exchanged stories of someone-somewhere’s incompetence to pass the time and ignore the pain or focus on stitching or wrapping. 

Jacques returned with his hands full of supplies and immediately set to work. Claude winced as Jacques tore his expensive hose apart. Usually, Claude detested people touching him even through the fabric of his clothes, and would no doubt be made even more uncomfortable by someone with certain tastes like Jacques, but he didn’t care as Jacques tossed the skirt to thigh-level and started undoing his chausses while still cleaning the wound. There was something about being in the hands of a competent doctor that let Claude ignore something that would normally rip his dignity to shreds. 

Only when the blanket was lifted again and Captain Phoebus strode into the hospice did Claude start feeling like he had a very unwelcome guest intruding on private matters. 

“Captain Phoebus,” Claude groaned. His bare leg suddenly felt cold. “I do hope you know I don’t pay you to flirt.” 

“I will,” Jacques said, casting a glance at the young man, winking, and then going back to cleaning the last bit of blood and dirt from Claude’s leg. Claude and Jacques had a severe clash about ethics in the eyes of the lord concerning what Jacques’ eyes liked to wander over and what they didn’t. Eventually they came to the resolution of what went on in Jacques’ head was between him and the lord and just so long as he never committed a lewd act with a man, Claude didn’t have to have him killed, and thus, for now, Jacque’s soul was saved. The man did believe that hell must have some nice people who were just like him to hook up with, but he wasn’t in a rush to get there. 

“Er…” Phoebus managed, wondering if he should keep an eye on Jacques. “Sir, I was asking around on your behalf—“ 

“For future reference, never do anything on my behalf,” Claude said, his fingers twitching over the sides of the bed. The pain was excruciating and Claude wanted something to occupy his mind, or at least his hands that ached to rub at the wound. 

This time Jacques didn’t say a smart comment, or even wink at Phoebus. Phoebus figured he either didn’t like people messing with Frollo, or he didn’t want anyone doing anything on his behalf either. The man just drew up a long length of thread and started it through a small needle. 

“Sir, I just thought I should alert your closest kin so they could help out or—“ 

“I need to hire someone more articulate,” Claude groaned. 

“That’s the least of your problems,” Jacques said. “The last thing any man needs is someone asking about his mother.” 

“Phoebus, come here, I can’t move,” Claude said, gesturing with a finger for the man to come closer. 

Phoebus stepped closer, deliberately stepping away from Jacques. 

Claude reached up and pulled Phoebus down by his cloak, let go and smacked the back of the blonde’s head before he could get back up. “Thank you, I ‘m feeling a bit better now.” 

“Sir, you really haven’t considered what you’d do in a situation like this?” 

“Well, obviously I have, given that I got here by myself,” Claude snapped. “My plan is to go home, hope the whole city doesn’t fall apart thanks to you, and await anything that needs my immediate attention while I get better. I just hope I’ll be able to ride after this.” The last part was directed to Jacques, who was nearly finished with his tiny, precise stitches. 

Suddenly Phoebus felt a lot more uncomfortable than he did before, and he already felt very unsafe being in a room with these two men. In the infirmary for the war, men were screaming, in tears, wailing in inhumanly loud voices, or numb to most everything due to the pain. Phoebus had gotten used to being called ‘Mama’ or by the name of someone’s girl or brother back home. Given Frollo’s lucidity, he wasn’t on any medicine to take the pain away, merely gritting his teeth as the needle went through his torn skin and flexing his hands like a pawing cat. Phoebus thought that if this man could sit still through such an injury and debate against any form of help short of the doctor’s, it wasn’t a good sign. 

“Phoebus, I was hit in the knee, not my head,” Claude said. “I am not so incapacitated that I cannot care for myself anymore. I do not need my mother, I do not need a nurse, and I certainly do not need you trying to convince me otherwise.” 

“You’re a pretty boy, but if you don’t stop talking, I’ll have to make you,” Jacques said. “I’m doing very delicate work here and I don’t need you trying to make either of us laugh or try to get up and strangle you.” Jacques finished off the stitches in Claude’s knee and started to soak the bandages in sweet-smelling water. 

“Sir, that’s not really what I’ve been trying to talk to you about,” Phoebus tried to defend himself with. 

“Captain, I’m starting to black out due to blood loss. Can we continue this mess of a conversation later?” Claude asked wearily. “And don’t say anything to coddle me.” 

Phoebus looked at Jacques. “Well, at least he got here when you were in,” Phoebus said. 

“Nonsense!” Jacques muttered, taking the bandages out. “I can’t be out there on a day like this. Besides, they bribe me with free cake to stay inside.” 

That was the last coherent thing Claude heard for a while. 

Darkness and flashes of color washed over him, along with different shades of terrible pain and eerie numbness, all in erratic patterns like tides fighting for dominance. 

He heard mumbling, voices added and subtracted to a conversation he couldn’t make out. He heard a few words, but nothing made sense and he didn’t want them to. People shuffled around him and he hoped everyone was making preparations to just leave him alone for a while. 

After a while, everything but the pain subsided. Claude blinked and cringed at a throbbing pain in his head. 

Wiping sweat from his face, Claude took in his environment. Blankets had been tacked around his bed to keep people out. The blankets were donations, most of them made by women whose husbands had been saved by Jacques’ skills, even though most of the men were dead now from something that not even Jacques could help except by offering comfort from his experience as a priest. Claude wondered why all the charity given to Jacques wound up with silly pictures of baby animals all over them. 

Beside Claude was a small stand, upon which sat a pitcher of water and a small portion of the free cake Jacques had received today. Between the stand and the bed, two crutches had been leaned against the wall. Claude pulled himself up to a sitting position on the bed and helped himself to some of the water. He and Jacques said that it was Jacques’ remedy for anything other than drowning. He’d never live it down if he ate the cake Jacques offered. 

Claude’s movements were slow and difficult due to his leg, which had been bandaged and re-bandaged during his bout of unconsciousness. A wooden brace had been tied tightly around his knee. 

Claude managed to maneuver the crutches from the wall and tested them. At first he was unsteady, but he soon won the battle with gravity and managed to learn how to take small steps with their help. 

He realized there was a sound he’d gotten used to coming from beyond the blankets. Listening closely, he found it to be a quiet discussion between three people: Jacques, Phoebus, and the archdeacon. Not thinking this could ever amount to anything good for him, he leaned on one of the crutches; he shoved the ugly blankets aside to investigate 

“Oh, you’re up,” the archdeacon said to Claude, ending whatever conversation the three were having, then and there. 

“And you smell horrible,” Claude replied, trying to wave the smell of alcoholic vomit from his nose. 

“I told him not to try to help the man,” Jacques said. A month into his profession, Jacques wouldn’t let any drunk in his hospice until after he was sure they’d emptied the contents of their stomachs. The archdeacon still had yet to learn that lesson. 

“I’m afraid my newly appointed captain got himself some stupid idea and that he’s trying to convince you of it,” Claude said. “Let me guess: I’m too late.” 

The archdeacon sighed. “You really are one to fight ideas before you’ve even heard them.” 

“I am two years younger than him,” Claude yelled, leaning heavily on a crutch to point at Jacques, who had backed away from the conversation, but stood where he could happily keep an eye on Phoebus. “and I am seventeen years younger than you!” This time Claude pointed at the archdeacon. “I do not need someone to care for me!” Claude angrily adjusted his hat as the archdeacon squirmed, uncomfortable with anyone, especially someone he disliked, knowing how old he was. 

“With all due respect sir,” Phoebus interjected. He ignored Jacques shaking his head at having opened his mouth. “That isn’t what I was suggesting in the first place.” 

“Then what exactly were you babbling about?” Claude said, determined to run the suggestion into the ground faster than before. 

“Sir, I was honestly wondering why you’ve never considered an apprentice before.” 

At first, Claude was honestly taken aback. The archdeacon hoped that he could win over the minister this time; either human contact would soften the man’s mood somewhat or it would be a rather deserved prank. 

“I don’t want one,” Claude answered curtly. “I’m not going to demean myself with taking care of a child. Before this goes any further, it is beneath my dignity and I absolutely refuse to—“ 

“Consider it a favor,” the archdeacon said. 

Claude was silent as he raised an eyebrow at the older man. 

Jacques buried his head in one hand. 

“I have no idea what I’m going to do, but I’m sure your mind can come up with something that will make me regret this whole thing. In the meantime, your captain and I will start looking for someone suitable.” 

“Why am I involved?” Phoebus asked. 

“Because you opened your mouth, Pretty Boy,” Jacques said, crossing his arms. He silently tried to plead with Claude to back out now, but Claude never looked at him. This was a challenge Claude wasn’t backing down from. 

“I can’t teach the damn thing to think on it’s feet, to know what someone will do next, how to improvise weaponry, the best place to strike, or even to know just how to interrogate someone,” Claude complained, as if he were forced to raise a retarded puppy. “I need cunning, I need thirst for righteousness, I need some spark in that child’s eyes that separates someone like Phoebus from me.” 

“Lack of people skills?” Phoebus mumbled. “ow!” Phoebus rubbed his head where Claude slapped him again. “Really hard fingers, too. I’ll keep an eye out.” 

“And don’t you dare just pick up some street urchin. I want obedience and silence from the boy, as well as stamina. You bring me someone useless and I’m throwing them back out on the street. From my window. 

“Now, I’m going home for some peace and quiet. You are still on duty, and I’d like to see some competence displayed this time.” Claude limped off angrily, making good speed on his new crutches. 

Jacques wished that somewhere in his anatomy books there were some pages he’d missed that held a cure for stupidity that wasn’t fatal.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day was the day children, and anyone else looking to make a few extra coins, were all over the city to clean up after the festival. This made the travel of those trying to return to normal life difficult. The number of people seeking Jacques’ hangover remedies, and the fact that Jacques constantly needed more supplies compounded the matter. Unfortunately for him he had to fight his way across the city himself to fetch them. 

No one felt like starting anything. The troublemakers were at home, nursing hangovers that felt like the apocalypse to them. Jacques had threatened to leave for the whole day and begin attending to the man in the Palace of Justice, saying that anyone who really wanted help could go there instead. Fear of the dungeons calmed the crowd and the rumors of Claude Frollo’s injury had already reached them. If Frollo could nearly take off a man’s jaw without a weapon, no one wanted to see what he’d do under the influence of frustration and pain while armed with two giant sticks. 

Phoebus was already in a bad mood from having been recruited to find a child that Frollo wouldn’t immediately throw out his window in disgust. It didn’t help that the archdeacon was nowhere to be found at the moment. 

Sighing, he set out to talk to a group of sweeping children as a girl slightly older than the rest of the crowd collected empty mugs, the occasional shoe, and any items too big or valuable to sweep out of their way. 

After five minutes, he realized the kids were backing away from him and casting him odd looks. He still couldn’t figure out what to say. 

“Looking to buy something?” the girl asked, approaching him with her apron full of the cups and shoes, as well as ribbons and small jewelry. Many of the smaller bits looked stolen, given the dirt on her face, in her matted braids and the mystery stains that covered the clothes she was too big for. He had no substantial evidence and right now he didn’t want to bother. Frollo wasn’t visiting the Palace of Justice and wouldn’t be unless something important came up. He’d end up in another argument with the man and she’d end up either stuck in the dungeons for months or killed just for being a bother. 

“Uh, no thank you,” Phoebus said. “I’m actually wondering if someone would like a job as an apprentice. Not for me, but for Judge Claude Frollo.” 

The children stopped sweeping and looked at each other. The girl began picking more colorful pieces of ribbon and the unbroken bits of jewelry from her apron and pocketed them. One of he boys picked his nose. 

“Anyone?” Phoebus asked. 

The girl looked up at him and smiled. 

“You look about the right age,” he said to her. “Do you have a brother, maybe a friend?” 

Her smiled vanished. Something in her eyes burned within, as if trying to set him on fire. 

“What? I’m just not a ribbon person,” he said as she moved around his horse and bent down. 

He left her to go back to work and looked over the crowd. “Hey mister,” one of the boys called out. 

“Captain, actually,” Phoebus said. 

“Why are you so colorful?” 

“Because I’m the Captain of the Guard,” Phoebus answered. “You can have some nice armor too, after a few years as apprentice.” 

“No, I don’t want to look like a clown,” the child answered and went back to his sweeping. 

Phoebus was cut off from his moping about the having kids laughing at him as he felt something move about his waist. “What—“ 

From the corner of his eye he saw the girl swing something and he felt Achilles rear up as something hit the horse from behind. 

Phoebus grabbed the reigns and held on tight as Achilles charged through the square, nearly crashing through the puppet stand where the local puppeteer was sleeping off the festivities. 

Ignoring the man’s yelling, Phoebus fought to calm Achilles and turned the horse around to chase the girl, again nearly hitting the puppet stand, this time almost running over the screaming puppeteer. 

The puppeteer dodged in time and thankfully decided to go find somewhere else to sleep as a rock sailed past him, and flew at him after rebounding off Phoebus’s spaulders. 

By now the children had scattered, abandoning brooms that Achilles now crushed under his pounding hooves. 

The girl hadn’t run very far, knowing it was idiotic to try and outrun a horse and had grabbed a broom. She grasped it firmly in both hands and her gaze was fixed on the creature barreling down at her. 

It suddenly dawned on Phoebus that she wasn’t just playing a dangerous game of chicken as she swung the broom to strike Achilles in the knees. Phoebus reached for his sword to smash the broom in two, but his belt wasn’t where he’d left it. 

Achilles reared up again, dancing on his hind legs to avoid the broom and Phoebus was thrown heavily to the ground. His helmet was knocked off and he landed on his shoulder and rear, both of which protested his actions vehemently. 

He rolled over, shoved himself up, and ran after the girl who had grabbed his sword from where she’d dropped it in order to hold the broom. She was good at running, but hadn’t planned on the sword weighing so much and had to hold it with both hands, which meant she couldn’t pull her skirts away from her feet. 

She managed to turn a corner sharply and nearly sent Phoebus crashing into a wall before he came close enough to tackle her to the ground. 

She tried to squirm out of his grasp, but he firmly held her arms to her sides and hefted her high enough that her frantically kicking legs only hit his chest armor and not the more vulnerable bits of his anatomy which she was aiming at. Not that her kicking him didn’t annoy him no end. 

Phoebus struggled with his anger to think straight. He now wondered if throwing her in the Palace of Justice was a good enough punishment and if it was worth forcing someone else to deal with her. He’d need to find someone really horrible to justify forcing them to put up with her. 

She spat in his face, the saliva hitting his cheek squarely in a large gob. 

He knew exactly what to do with her. “How would you like the job?” he asked. 

To his surprise she stopped her struggles, dropping his sword from her hand. 

“What?” The girl asked. 

“Would you like the job?” Phoebus repeated. The girl stared at him a few moments letting the shock of the question absorb into understanding. 

She nodded. 

“You do?” he asked, setting her down, but not letting go. 

She nodded again. Well, he may not have found obedient, but he’d found silent. 

He had no idea what a spark in someone’s eyes was supposed to be, but she seemed to have enough cunning to have gotten away with stealing from a lesser-trained man, possibly even kill him if he fell from his horse at a different angle. A thirst for righteousness… well, can’t have everything and if Frollo did, Phoebus didn’t want to be around when that happened. 

“Then why did you take my sword?” Phoebus asked. 

“I was mad that you only wanted boys.” 

Well, that was sort of righteousness. Too bad she wasn’t even sort of a boy. 

……………… 

Phoebus had finally found the Archdeacon, who said that any other attempt at finding an apprentice would result in a similar situation or something worse. Phoebus decided one disaster was already one too many and that he didn’t want to be involved anymore. 

“Well, then, we need to ask her father,” the Archdeacon said. 

“If he’s anything like her, you can ask him,” Phoebus protested. 

“I don’t know who my father is,” the girl interjected. “My mother hasn’t spoken to me in two months. She can’t be found most of the time.” 

“Well, I’m not finding either one,” Phoebus said. 

“That brings us to the more pressing problems,” the archdeacon said. Phoebus wondered if he could hide for the rest of the day. 

…………. 

The two men were at such a loss, the only idea that came into their heads was to visit Jacques, the only man who could conjure a miracle of having a pleasant conversation with Frollo. 

“If you’re not here for hangover medicine, go to the back of the line,” Jacques told them without looking at them as he ground ingredients in his mortar. The three stood in his workroom, away from everyone else, but also in Jacques’s way, as he complained about it for five minutes. “If you two still have that blasted idea of an apprentice, you should quit now. Frankly, I thought you had gotten into the communion wine again.” 

“Yes, it’s about that,” the archdeacon said. “We were wondering if it would even be safe to give this child to Frollo.” 

“I don’t think it’d be safe to give him a duck,” Jacques answered curtly. “I’m not his mother! For all I know he’s got it in for his horse!” He finally turned around and was shocked when he saw the girl standing between the two men. “Well, if it’s any comfort, he’d marry her before he tried anything if that’s what you’re whining about. Although I do distinctly remember him saying ‘boy.’” 

“We don’t know what to do with her,” Phoebus said. 

“How should I know?” Jacques complained angrily. “I thought I made it quite clear I wasn’t interested in anything shaped like that. I’m sure between you two you can figure it out, but I can’t see why you were worried about Frollo when The Holy Book says two men shouldn’t be together even with a woman involved.” 

“That’s not what we meant. He had the idea of dressing her as a boy and said you’d know…something. It wasn’t my idea!” Phoebus defended himself as Jacques glared. 

Jacques sat tapping his foot for a moment. 

“The answer is no and the answer to anything after that is to stay out of my poppy seed concentrate. I’ll be glad to talk to you after you injure yourselves.” 

Jacques turned back to his bench, but didn’t resume work. He had a lot of work to do and all of it was curing drunks who wouldn’t learn. It wouldn’t be nearly so bad if he weren’t so lonely and bored all the time. 

“I want a favor too,” Jacques said, sniffing. “I want company.” 

“The answer is no and the answer to anything after that is to stay out of your own poppy seed concentrate,” Phoebus said. 

Jacques turned back around and knocked on Phoebus’s head, as if expecting a hollow sound. “You have nice face, but I do wish you had something other than hair behind it. I said ‘company.’ I was hoping for the small and furry kind, preferably orange and cuddly. Besides, I hardly think you’d be good at catching mice.” 

“I’ll see what I can find,” Phoebus said, relieved, embarrassed, and yet angry at everyone using his head as a target. 

“Not you, him,” Jacques said, pointing at the archdeacon. “If that’s what you bring Frollo, I’m going to end up with a donkey.” 

“Well, I’m leaving,” Phoebus said. “Somewhere there’s work for me to do.” 

“You can go get something for her to wear,” Jacques demanded from the archdeacon, who was taken aback from the sudden orders. “I’m not running a tailor shop. And if you have any more bright ideas, I hope they have to do with the church. This whole thing is ridiculous!” 

The archdeacon quickly left and Jacques was alone in the room with the girl. 

“I am not going to enjoy this, I want you to know that,” he told her. 

………….. 

Jacques was faced with the two things his anatomy books could never teach him: giving a damn about the female form and how to cut hair. 

The first was easy to deal with; all he had to do was make the girl look vaguely like she had a shape he might someday be interested in and was hiding it underneath a pile of clothes. He also got a kick out of sending the archdeacon to scrounge up a pair of bodies. Somehow, hours later, the archdeacon returned with one, the expression on his face a mix of embarrassment and sulk. Laughing at this through the whole process, Jacques and the girl found a way to fasten it over a men’s undershirt. The rest was easy: a pair of braies replaced her skirts and over that went a giant pair of trousers that ballooned out after being tied over her skinny hips, a shirt that was just as big, and a tunic. 

“Ah, green, the color of…” Jacques said, improvising a bit of praise. The sentence fell flat on its face 

“Green,” the archdeacon finished, for it was as close to a compliment as they could get, especially after the mistake of letting Jacques cut her dirty—in many senses of the word—hair. Despite the fact that a surgeon and a barber were one and the same when it came to occupation, Jacques was only slightly better at cutting hair than he was at noticing women. He’d never injured anyone, but one of the first things anyone learned in Paris was that one should find someone else entirely if one wanted a haircut. This was one of Jacques’ worst attempts with scissors, for he had to cut out mats, knots, tangles, twigs, and tar, making her hair a misshapen, fluffy mess that looked as if someone had brushed it out in all directions after a horse had thoroughly tried—and partially managed—to eat it. 

Jacques went back to work, grumbling that he had yet to have a cat as per his agreement and the archdeacon ferociously wrestled with the dirt on her face. 

An hour later, Phoebus returned, noticeably dirtier than before, rubbing his arm. He ignored Jacques’ happy look and took in what the metamorphosis had managed. Somewhere in the metaphorical chrysalis, things had gone horribly wrong, but at least, to him, it had still worked. He admitted he was convinced, but Jacques commented that he thought a horse in a hat would make him convinced. Admittedly, the captain wasn’t too far off in that her hair and clothes were all that distinguished any gender to her. She had no detectable curves lower than her neck, she was too short for a well-grown adult to get much of a good look at without bending down and even then, she was too skinny to get much of a look at anything, to which she did not have much in the first place. If she stood straight upright and brought her limbs close to her body and had a slight wardrobe change, she could have passed as a low signpost to Phoebus and anyone else just as smart. 

Phoebus led the girl away, not wanting to be involved in the farce any longer.


	3. Chapter 3

The sun was beginning to set when Claude heard a knock at his door. Whoever it was, they were polite enough to wait for him to cross the room on his crutches. 

Claude had no real enthusiasm to deal with anyone when he stood up and seeing Captain Phoebus at the door made him wish he hadn’t bothered. 

“Are you lost or do you have something worthwhile to bug me about—and if you do, please let it be that someone died.” 

“Uh, I think we found a kid,” Phoebus mumbled as he shoved the girl in front of him, hoping she’d be the target of Frollo’s hands and insults and screaming from now on. 

Frollo stared at her for a long time. Finally he poked her with the end of one of his crutches. “This again. Tell the archdeacon I don’t want him sending any more women my way.” Claude was only marginally ready to admit that the archdeacon had been trying to set him up with women to settle down with. He didn’t want to have to admit that it had taken him a long time to figure out and still didn’t know when it all started. 

“You can tell, sir?” Phoebus asked. Maybe Jacques was right about the horse in a hat. 

“I’m not blind,” Claude said, sneering and poking the girl again. “What, are you going to start screaming at me next? I injured my knee, nothing else.” 

“So then…um…” 

Claude sighed, his shoulders sagging over his crutches. “Captain Phoebus, if I were inclined to do such a thing I’d go to the whorehouse; I know where it is because I’ve broken up hundreds of fights and I’ve had to deal with at least a dozen murders. Just because your mind works one way, doesn’t mean mine does. Now get your head out of the gutter and get yourself out of my doorway.” 

Phoebus shrugged and left. Claude crutched closer to the girl and grabbed her hair fiercely to lift her face to look at his. They both regarded the other for a long time. 

She had managed her dream; she had a boy’s job, one that revolved around pounding at something in some way or another, with or without skill. No more thread, no more needles of any kind, no more having to memorize shapes of chests and know how to cut cloth to warp around them. She had traded a woman’s backbreaking work for a boy’s backbreaking work; she had traded a dangerous, probably short life of a girl for a dangerous, probably short life of a boy; she had traded being owned by a man for being owned by a man. All in all, her position in life had merely moved sideways, although she hoped she’d be happier in this new margin of human life. 

He was judging her, measuring her against some idea in his head and she knew it. There was no kindness in his face and she wasn’t surprised. What did surprise her were his eyes. She could see him contemplating something deeper than just the fact that she was a girl off the street and secretly she felt complimented, even if in a second his thoughts culminated into taking then and there. 

He threw her backwards and she landed on the floor. Whatever he’d seen in her he either wasn’t impressed by or didn’t care to deal with at the moment. 

“Get up,” he ordered. 

She silently obeyed and hung her head. 

“Look at me when I talk to you!” he yelled. 

She obeyed and he was mildly impressed. Maybe it was her lack of defiance, maybe it was her speed, maybe he just liked it when people did something he told them to and nothing new came about from it. 

“I don’t care where you’re from or what you’re used to. From now on you will follow my exact orders and you will not cause trouble. You will keep yourself clean and only speak to me when I ask you to. Do you understand?” 

She nodded. 

“I said ‘Do you understand?’ Answer me!” he yelled, jabbing her painfully with his crutch. 

“Yes, sir.” 

“’Yes, Master,’ now get it right. You are my servant, not an officer.” 

“Yes, Master.” 

Now that everything was in its proper place, Claude ignored her insolence and swiftly made his way down the hallway. She followed silently and he didn’t correct anything she did. He continued giving orders, however. “You will tend to me and run any errands I feel I can trust you on. You will be punctual and precise. In the meantime, you will keep this place clean. You will get up before dawn and set the table and clear it immediately after meals. You will do the same in one hour from now.” 

He stopped and turned back to her. She stood to the side and slightly behind him and said nothing. “Shoulders out if you want to be a boy, stop cringing.” He continued his trek down the hall and stopped at a table with a book on it. “There is a closet downstairs with cleaning equipment. You may go in there, but stay out of the kitchen and the pantry and do not bother the cook. Do not bother the washerwomen either when dealing with laundry. And the only things I want to see you doing in my bedroom are changing the mattress, making the bed, or putting away clothes.” 

Claude was in that strange part of the upper-class that all the other upper-class dumped on and all the rest of the classes avoided. He was overworked, but would afford many fine things to use to gloat over other overworked people. He was privileged enough to read and thus know of other people’s more horrible experiences without having to suffer through meeting them. He had purchased one of the new books that had been made off the printing press, and was proud of the fact that only people with money like him could afford it. He sat down in the chair next to the table, one knee comfortably bent, the other annoyingly straight in the brace. “Move that.” 

The girl bent down and shoved his footstool under his foot, secretly in awe at the clothes she came close up to. 

“I am already housing and feeding you and even paying you, I am not going to do anything else for you. I don’t want to hear any crying or see any imbecility from you when I send you to train or go on duty. You are a boy now, so you had better learn to act like one. And if I find you stealing from me I shall personally behead you. Now get to work and keep far away, I’m tired of looking at you.” 

The girl ran down the hallway and out the door, soon returning with rags and a bucket of water, immediately setting to cleaning the floor. 

Eventually, Claude set his book down, startled at her punctuality at setting the table. ‘If this is what having an apprentice is like, I should have gotten one before,’ he thought. ‘Then again…’ he mused as he watched her inelegant use of a spoon and soon her struggles with an upset stomach over the rich food. 

“If you are going to be sick, go do it out on the street.” 

Other than making strange facial contortions, she kept her sickness down, having been given charcoal by Jacques. 

The dishes were cleared away quietly and the girl went back to working. 

Instead of returning to his expensive book, Claude watched her. It was a hobby of his to watch in order to absorb tiny details. Often this lead to killing people, but sometimes he put his spectatorship to other uses. He had used this knowledge of what tiny signs indicated larger aspects to watch Jacques and it took three silent trips of watching the man to decide he was actually worth having a conversation with and that they should have a little discussion about whether or not Jacques should have his hands on him; that was during the years Jacques was rather secretive about his true reasons for taking up a job which prohibited marriage to a woman. Ironically, this led Jacques to become a bit more bold about what he liked, but Claude didn’t truly care as long as laws weren’t broken (or at least Jacques wasn’t caught so he never had to hear about it), and they both found fun in the archdeacon’s reactions. 

The girl was very skilled on her knees in the only way Claude felt women should be: cleaning. She didn’t keep looking at him, waiting for some start of a conversation or help or pity. She ignored him as much as he ignored her and he wondered if he should feel insulted being so close to peasantry that didn’t show respect in the form of unwavering shame or fear. She had yet to show any signs of stealing from him. Everything he’d started out with was still on his person, and the only time he’d let her out of his sight was when he’d sent her to fetch water for cleaning the floor. If she’d taken anything the cook would be having a fit now. Either she knew how to do her job properly or she knew how to do it properly long enough until he let his guard down and needed sleep. 

“What is your name?” he asked. “Your boy name.” 

“Gaetan,” she answered immediately without looking up. 

‘Quick thinking,’ Claude thought. ‘I wonder if she’d be that quick in battle.’ He mulled over the name in his head. “And do you know what that name means?” 

“A prison in Italy where they executed criminals, Master.” 

Claude allowed himself to smirk at her comment. He liked names that reminded people of their place in life. He was named after his father, who was a merchant who married a noble woman; his father wanted a soldier for some reason and his mother wanted a scholar for an equally unfathomable reason. Why a well-learned woman or a man hoping for a strapping and brave son would name their son Claude—meaning ‘crippled’—was an eternal and annoying mystery to him. 

“Why choose that name?” he asked. Somehow he’d figure out the mind of this vagabond whom he’d allowed inside his own house. It was handy that she’d cleaned his floor and a little entertainment of tossing a criminal out his own window would be a very nice present from the archdeacon. If she was actually innocent, then she could start on the fireplace and he’d see someone die sooner or later outside. As long as he got his way one way or another, he was content. 

“It is my own name, if it were meant for a boy, Master.” 

Claude was silent for a long time in thinking of what to take of her words and what to say next. By the time he spoke again, she had left and exchanged her bucket for a broom to sweep the fireplace. “Why would anyone name a girl-child after a prison?” his deep voice echoed through the long hallway and shook the fireplace like a bell, dumping soot onto her frazzled hair. He wished he had something more threatening to say. 

“Because that is what my mother said would happen to me if she could not pay the rent, Master.” Claude inwardly scoffed at the fact that the Archdeacon was mad at him for naming his son ‘Quasimodo’ as if he were the only one to name a child like that. Maybe that was why his parents chose ‘Claude’ as his: a good threat to keep him in line. But then something about motherly affection suddenly clicked in his mind and he grew angry. “Your mother sold her daughter to a strange man in order to pay off the rent, thinking she had a better bargain?” What horrible, disgusting, lunatic peasantry was Phoebus dealing with when Claude wasn’t there to watch him? 

“I ran off, Master,” she said, her voice hard to decipher from inside a giant stone box. “I thought it would be easier for her to pay rent if she only had herself to feed for a while, especially since she is pregnant again, Master.” 

From across the hallway, she could see his cold, pale eyes focusing on her in pure loathing. He stood up and grabbed his crutches, covering the distance between them swiftly. He grabbed her by her hair and just as quickly made his way back down the hallway toward the window. 

She followed, doing her best to keep up with his undulating gait to slacken the pull on her hair. 

Her story made little sense to him and he suspected her of lying, though he could not find any motive yet. Anyone who hid anything from him, however, must be a criminal; otherwise they would have no reason to hide it in the first place. 

“Where is your father in all of this?” he demanded. 

“He left my mother before I was born, Master!” Gaetan said, wishing her voice wasn’t cracking from how hard he pulled her hair. 

“And yet your mother is pregnant again and you still have no father. What kind of mother do you have? A whore?” he was quiet, keeping his usually booming voice from echoing in his hallway or from being heard in the streets. Yet he was loud and at what seemed to be his peak of intimidating because he pulled her up by her shirt and held her over the windowsill, holding his face as close to hers as possible without touching. 

Gaetan blinked, trying to speak over her fear, knowing he’d carry out his threat just because he felt like it even if she did reply. She swallowed and forced herself to speak. “Yes, Master,” she squeaked. 

He dropped one crutch and settled all his weight on the other as he stretched his arm out as far as he could, holding her out over the streets. “I have been brought a whore’s child? What kind of filth—" he stopped as he felt his voice becoming too loud. Instead he gritted his teeth to force himself into silence. 

Was the archdeacon even aware of what exactly he’d sent Claude? A street prostitute so dirty her pay barely paid the rent was the mother of this child. He was tempted to let go immediately to keep from touching her any longer. How much had this child learned from her mother? What nasty diseases did she bring into his pristine and pious house? 

Something stopped him from dropping her, though. Perhaps, buried deep down inside in a tiny part of his mind whose voice he could not even hear, yet it did it’s best to influence him, he would feel guilt or loss at killing a potentially innocent child, at least one that was not a gypsy. Whether that was true or not, the part of his mind that he could hear was one that began reciting scripture. Had not Jesus rescued a whore from the stones of the town? Had not his words of God convinced her to give up her sinful ways and follow The Lord’s very Son from then on? But this whore was already doing more than that. He may be nothing than a common man; no matter how much he worked at being a good Catholic, he’d never be more than that. He was not one to be worshipped, but he could teach her the holy ways of The Savior and, even better, help her cast off her female facets. Ever since Eve, women had been punished with a role below men and suffering pains of their womanly duties, eternally punished for having been made inferior. But had not fifty years ago his very own county’s Jeanne d’Arc led men to battle, remaining virginal and being declared a martyr twenty-four years later? That brave young girl who God had chosen to give his orders to had shed all she could of her sex and become as much of a man as possible that soldiers began to suspect that there were no breasts lurking under that triumphant armor. He could have his own soldier, fighting against all wickedness against The Great and Merciful Lord, rescued from the path of sin and pitiful form of a woman, and shaped in his own image the way Adam was shaped in the image of God. 

His face softened and a sly smile crept upward on his face, lighting up his snow-colored eyes. Even more frightened, Gaetan cast a quick glance at the street in panic, wondering what to do as his grip slackened along with his expression. 

“Lying at this point would not be in your best interests, shall we say,” Claude warned. “Have you even been sold to or solicited by any men?” 

“No…Master.” She was smart enough not to struggle; she didn’t want to anger him further, nor did she want him to lose his grip. 

“And just why did Captain Phoebus choose you of all people?” 

“I attacked his horse with a broom.” 

Claude winced. His new Captain of the Archers was not off to a good start. He’d nearly been defeated by a street sweeper so small that Claude easily held her off her feet with one hand. At least his theory of Phoebus giving up for a day and checking out a brothel wasn’t confirmed. 

He sighed and set his mind to thinking. He tried not to roll his eyes and focused on his apprentice instead. She didn’t appear to be lying from the look in her eyes. He could break her to see if he could force a confession, but if he was wrong then she’d no longer be of any use to him as someone to train. 

If that was indeed the whole truth about her, then he now only had to contemplate how much of someone else he could put up with. He did most of the cleaning in the house himself to keep from any idle thoughts and in case he needed something to do to focus his mind on a particularly difficult case. With his leg, his house would definitely fall to shambles and she had been quite efficient in cleaning his floor already. That was one factor to consider in her favor. 

Another was that this was a human being. He never cared for them in the first place, and they were a lot of work. Every day of raising Quasimodo, he vowed he’d never raise another child, even if he had to kill it in front of the archdeacon and then murder the old man to shut him up. He wanted a servant and a mind to teach strategies for killing, arresting, and interrogating and he wanted nothing else. He did not want a mind that refused his teachings and he did not want to hear about thoughts on anything else. Ever. That was a factor against her. 

So far her fate rested on him deciding that seeing her die on the pavement was more fun than thinking any more or if his arm gave out. 

He would have to train her. That would be difficult. Claude was a good scholar, but not a very good teacher. It had taken years to teach Quasimodo to read mere French, let alone Latin. It had taken a decade after that to instill the true meaning of many stories in The Bible on the boy. To teach reading, writing, a million different scenarios and how to survive them—or make sure someone else does not—had to take eternity and not even Jesus himself had that long to teach. That was another one against her. 

However, if she was a good learner, and as cunning as he needed her to be, she’d figure out most of it herself and he’d have not one, but two fierce enforcers of justice roaming Paris and the nightmares of criminals. That was another in her favor. 

Apparently it all boiled down to how he could get the most amusement out of her. He pulled her closer, but not back into his house. He leaned out to examine the street. Strays were milling about, fighting with the rats over something, nothing but a dark street with darker shapes with the occasional gleaming eyes and constant rabid chatter. He wished he had more light; seeing someone torn to pieces by mongrels piqued his curiosity. He cast her a glance, one that one would give to an old shoe, wondering if it would be best to repair it or toss it to the curb or if one could find something entertaining to throw it at. He assumed he could someday see her as a boy, and then decided yes, he could, and if the populace was as smart as Phoebus, so would they. He thought about a favor from the Archdeacon and wondered just how many people deserved to have their lives ruined—or ended—by his apprentice’s presence in their lives. 

Slowly, he pulled her back into the house and then threw her on the floor. 

“Get up. Now.” 

She stood up from the floor and he immediately slapped her across the face. The sound rang out in the dark hallway, slowly dying out as if it had some desire to hang on to its short life. 

To Claude’s approval, the girl did nothing. She just stood where she was with her faced turned to direction it had ended up after the strike. 

Claude grabbed his other crutch. He took her face in his hand and forced her to face him. He pointed a finger in her face in threat. “You are disgusting, having been born from that slut! I want you to remember what kind of degradation it is upon me to take you in and I want you to know I expect the cunning of a fox and the loyalty of a starving dog, which you are! If ever I feel reminded of where you came from I will strike you again! From now on, your life is mine and you will dedicate it to killing in the name of The Lord and the law under any and all circumstances or you will never show your face to me again.” With that he stamped off to bed, leaving her in the darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

Phoebus’ five minutes had turned into thirty by the time he returned, dressed in full armor. Gaetan was standing at the side of the door, her hands clasped behind her back. She had solved her belt problem by tying a knot on either side of the belt, but the thing still fell to her hips and sagged.   
“As much as I hate this idea, I think you’ll do the least damage on a horse,” he said. Gaetan stood and waited for him to move.   
“You know, some sort of reaction would be nice.”   
She blinked.   
“One day with that guy and you’re acting as creepy as him!” Phoebus yelled. “Well, do something!” Gaetan cocked her head to the side in confusion. 

“Do what, sir?” She wondered if she had the right title for him.   
“Just…never mind, come on.” Phoebus walked to the stables. “If you want to talk, you can.”   
She said nothing as they entered the stables.   
Achilles immediately began frantically stamping in his pen upon seeing Gaetan. A bad haircut and a pair of pants didn’t fool the horse. Phoebus felt insulted at the fact that the horse seemed smarter than he was, but tried to calm it nonetheless. 

“Easy, easy. She’s going to leave you alone. Easy.” Phoebus turned back to Gaetan. “Okay, first rule: you leave my horse alone from now on or I’ll let Frollo—hey!”   
Gaetan stopped in mid-motion as she put a piece of old, dried alfalfa to her mouth.   
“What in the world are you doing? That’s for horses! Don’t tell me you’ve been stealing from stables!” One minute into instructing her and he was wishing he’d arrested her and ‘forgotten’ to tell Frollo. “Say something!” Gaetan took her hand away from her mouth. 

“And chickens, sir.” Phoebus put his hand to his face. 

“I actually meant something other than that.” Gaetan looked at the grass in her hands. Phoebus slowly took his hand away from his face. Blanching at the situation, no matter how insane it was, wasn’t going to fix it. Gaetan held her hand out flat, her fingers as far back as they would comfortably go, holding out the food for Achilles, who scoffed and turned his head.   
“Oh come on!” Phoebus reprimanded his horse.   
Reluctantly, Achilles accepted the peace offering, grunting at Gaetan after devouring the food to show he was still upset. “Second rule, you eat people food,” Phoebus said. “Third, start making some noise now and then, this is getting weird.”   
“Yes, sir.”   
“Close enough. Here, pay attention.” Phoebus set to teaching her how to saddle a horse and how to adjust it. The horse he chose was the smallest horse that was used by common soldiers. Achilles and Frollo’s horse were trained to listen to one specific rider and one specific rider only. This horse, however, was trained to follow orders from anyone, so long as they were holding its bridle or sat on top of it. Admittedly, this made horse thievery possible, but Frollo felt that being dragged through the city by that very horse would be a good deterrent. Whether this was true or not, the stables were always full.   
It took two tries to mount the horse, but Gaetan found out how to turn her foot in the first stirrup and Phoebus didn’t have to resort to helping her up. After Gaetan got used to the different ways of directing the horse, the two finally left the stables. Gaetan hadn’t said anything since feeding Achilles, but Phoebus didn’t like the way she looked at him; it made him feel he was being watched a bit too closely and he was afraid she’d spit in his face again.   
“Stay close to me,” Phoebus said as he mounted Achilles, who whinnied in agreement. It wasn’t for Gaetan’s protection so much as his own and the rest of the city’s.   
Gaetan steered her horse out of the stables after him. “Yes, sir.”   
“Look, stop that,” he complained. “I know Frollo was screaming nonsense about silence and obedience, but I’m not him and I don’t want you to think I am! I’ve been in Paris for two days and I just want a nice conversation with someone. I’m sure that if you’re as smart as you must be to have survived living with him, you can conjure up something more than ‘Yes, sir.’ And stop calling me ‘sir,’ it makes me feel old. Now shut up and talk!” Achilles rolled his eyes and Phoebus realized the words that just came out of his mouth. “Except for making a comment about what I just said.”   
“Women and servants are not meant to speak up,” Gaetan said immediately.   
“Well, you’re not supposed to be either right now, so you can save being quiet for when you are.” He signaled to Achilles to start his patrol around the city, keeping his horse at a slow canter for Gaetan to follow at. He still didn’t trust her, but she was his best bet at ever getting ‘Lovely weather we’re having’ without the phrase indicating he should watch out for anvils falling from the sky.   
“My father was a soldier.”   
“See, there, a nice—wait, I thought you said you didn’t know who he was.”   
“I don’t, I just know he was a soldier and left for the war when my mother told him she was pregnant.”   
Now it was Phoebus’s turned to be silent for a while. “How old are you?”   
“Thirteen.”   
“Well, if you go telling other people about that, I want you to include the fact that I was nine when I left for the war and no matter what your mother looked like I wouldn’t have been interested.”   
“I should hope not. She wanted to get married. You’re not old enough now.”   
“How about you go back to calling me ‘sir.’” Phoebus said. This girl was quickly making him insecure. First he felt stupid, then he felt unattractive, then old, now her age.   
“Are you doing this on purpose?”   
“Doing what on purpose?”   
“Playing mind games with me.”   
“Not much to play with.”   
“I walked into that one didn’t I?” Phoebus muttered.   
“Is that why you were only concerned about me afterwards?” Gaetan asked. It was startling, the way she no longer talked like a tiny child, and slightly comforting. It no longer felt like a game or like she was intentionally reticent out of hatred.   
“Are you calling me stupid?”   
“You get there in the end. So far.”   
“Thanks for the compliment. Should I be concerned?”   
“My father’s concerns were paying for wine, paying for my mother, and that nothing kept him from just having fun. You can obviously afford wine, you don’t want anything to do with my mother, and you could always have had someone else train me if you are not having fun.”   
“Right now, nothing I do has anything to do with fun.”   
“Then I do not know how to help you with that concern of yours. If you have any other concerns, I don’t know what they are.”   
“In other words you have no idea what I’m saying?” Phoebus asked.   
“I have no idea what you’re thinking.”   
It wasn’t a nice chat about the weather, but he hadn’t been hit or hit on and no one was screaming or throwing rocks and he’d sort of been complimented. Phoebus hoped that things would improve beyond this in time and that this wasn’t the best he’d ever get. He sighed. As much as he wanted to stop such things, he preferred to dance around painful subjects when it came to dialog. 

“He didn’t…um…” Gaetan gave Phoebus the same look Frollo had given her when he first laid eyes on her. It wasn’t so much of disapproval, but one of tired frustration and wondering if it was malice or stupidity that had masterminded the current situation.   
“What?” Phoebus asked.   
“You’re not stupid,” Gaetan said, turning back to focus on riding her horse. The animal jostled her with every step. She wondered how Phoebus, born with much more sensitive anatomy when it came to sitting on something moving, could stand riding for so long. There was some trick to moving with the horse which she could only manage by concentrating; perhaps it took so much mental work to keep it in mind that Phoebus might have more brain to spare if he walked.   
“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Phoebus said. There was no chance in hell he was getting a sincere compliment from someone who looked at him the way Frollo looked at gypsies. That thought suddenly reminded him of something very important. He grabbed the reins of her horse and pulled her down an alleyway. “Look. I may not know what that damn man thinks all the time, in fact most of the time I don’t know what he’s scheming up, but I know what Frollo thinks of gypsies. I don’t think that way and while I’m training you, I’m not going to stand for arresting or hurting an innocent person, no matter who they are, understand me?”   
“The penalty for insubordination is death.”   
“Let me put it this way: I don’t care. Now do you understand me?” Gaetan’s scheming gaze changed. There was some question in her mind and Phoebus felt rather happy that finally he wasn’t the only one taking a while to think things over. He was apprehensive, though, expecting a very frightening answer from her. “I don’t care about gypsies one way or another,” Gaetan finally answered. “I don’t care about most people one way or another.”   
“Well, you’re going to learn to care about people with this job. You have to. Whatever’s going on in that creepy brain of his, even Frollo cares about people. I just want you to care about everyone the same way. If you don’t I’m going to do my best to be worse than he will. Now, do you understand what I’m saying?”   
“Yes, sir,” Gaetan said. “Maybe someday.”   
“Well, work on it.”   
“Sir?” Gaetan said, as Phoebus led Achilles out of the alleyway.   
“This had better be good.”   
“I lied,” she said fiercely. “I know where my mother is, but I ran away from home four months ago. She always said I was too expensive to care for, so I left when I found she was pregnant again. I thought with only herself to support for a while she would be able to afford a child this time around. I couldn’t go back before and I can’t go back now or my master will kill me. She was the only person I cared about and the best I ever did for her was leave.” Phoebus had stopped immediately at her first sentence. He certainly hadn’t expected a confession of anything short of murder by now. He especially didn’t expect an angry confession. Even back in the war, when someone told a story from the heart, they poured it out by crying into homemade alcohol and the anger came later. But Gaetan said it not angrily at him, but at herself. It wasn’t a justification; it wasn’t a weapon she used against others. It was something she beat herself up with and turned the bitterness of it out at others.   
“You’ll learn,” Phoebus said. When did he suddenly have a lack of people skills? “Take your time.”   
………….   
Clopin had changed the location of his puppet show to the other corner of the square. He had also changed his strategy and his stories. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about orphans and he hoped that Giselle would at least let him sit and watch her if he found her lost daughter. He spoke of demons lurking in the guise of strange omens: water that showed no reflection, cats that could only speak in echoes, and hens that crowed like roosters. He spoke of them lurking everywhere, watching, always watching. These things could not be killed; they’d only find a new body to inhabit and inciting their wrath would endanger children further, because that was the only target of these boogie men. Only by being obedient little children and recognizing the monsters could children break the spell and maybe even rescue a victim if their faith was strong enough. Truthfully, he thought the whole story was rubbish, but it was the best he could come up with, basing it on a story Giselle used to tell to her daughter. She had told it to him the night her daughter disappeared. Admittedly, he left out the part of banishing the spirits with a flaming cross and the spirits dying, but he didn’t want to encourage kids to kill animals or start brandishing fire.   
At the end Clopin asked the audience if anyone had seen any lost children, homeless waifs or translucent and lost spirits that even roamed in the daytime.   
The crowd was silent.   
“Anyone?” Clopin asked.   
One kid began to pick his ear.   
“I can’t say that I’ve seen any such things,” a familiar deep baritone said. Clopin jumped in fright and the children backed away as Frollo crutched his way over to the puppet show. 

“Go away,” he scolded the crowd of children, causing them to scatter in fear. Clopin had already had enough of the minister and he frankly had had enough of everything else right now. The gypsies were forming violently opposing factions, groups disbanding and rearranging themselves overnight, changing at least twice a day and almost always screaming and throwing rocks at each other. There was currently less street entertainment and a lot more street disruption. If anyone else were in charge of justice, Clopin would have gladly let many of them be arrested, for the squabbles were over opinions of his now-dormant love life.   
Frollo had nothing to do with the landlady barring gypsies from the brothel, but at the moment he might as well. For all Clopin cared at the moment, Frollo was the reason for all the bad things going on, including all the times he could never find a matching sock. Clopin had thrown himself into his pitiful puppet show, hoping for something to improve, and not only was his audience as helpful as a duck when one needed milk, but the minister had scared it off. Clopin needed something, anything at all, he felt he could take out his frustrations on.   
“What kind of insane asylum are you running here?” Clopin screamed.   
“I’m sorry, what?” Claude said, backing away. He hadn’t come prepared to be yelled at by a man who had painted socks on his hands.   
“Your stupid captain nearly ran me over twice and I was nearly killed by someone hurling a brick!” Truthfully it was a rock and truthfully his people were throwing them all over Paris only to change opinion or alliance a few hours later and hurl them at someone else.   
“Captain Phoebus was throwing rocks?” Claude asked. This was certainly not in his plan for the day. His plans hinged on the puppeteer staying where he usually was. He already had to make different plans now that the man had moved his puppet stand to the other end of the square.   
“No! Someone else was throwing rocks!” Clopin yelled. “I didn’t see them!”   
“And why not?” Clopin didn’t have an answer to that that would fit his mood. He didn’t want questions, he just wanted to be able to scream.   
Claude, however, knew that the gypsy usually slept most of the day after the Feast of Fools and was either drunk or hungover as well. “Sleeping on the streets, even in odd-colored boxes, is against the law, which will just lead you to the Palace of Justice.” Claude noticed the gypsy must have missed the last two days of rumors somehow, for the man was now spent of anger and staring quizzically at Claude’s legs and crutches as if they were a new form of animal. Claude hoped this would actually make things easier. “Now, I appreciate you leaving me out of your little act, although I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to accomplish, but I have somewhere to be and if you don’t move right now I’ll remind you that my throwing arm hasn’t been damaged!”   
Clopin sidestepped the minister, still staring, and let Frollo pass. 

“Too bad it’s not against the law to be a pompous a—“   
“I heard that.” Clopin fumed. Still fuming, he slipped into a shadow. If all of Paris was going to go crazy, it would be best to keep an eye on the more dangerous crazies.   
………………   
“Ah, there you are,” Claude said, making his way toward the archdeacon.   
“I wish I weren’t,” the archdeacon said. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking things easy?”   
“Actually, that was what I came to speak to you about. I must report that I shan’t be attending for a while due to the obvious circumstances, but given them I thought it was time Quasimodo got to know some other people, perhaps a meeting every Sunday.”   
“You’re allowing him out of the bell tower?” The archdeacon was shocked at the implications of Frollo’s words. At first he thought Frollo had come to confess to having murdered his apprentice and wanted it absolved as a favor.   
“Perhaps someday, but for now I thought he should meet someone closer to his own age. Besides, I can’t be going up so many stairs in this condition. Of course, if you feel it shouldn’t be allowed...”   
“What? Why, what exactly are you planning?”   
“I was planning on sending my apprentice, at least as long as he is in my service. I was actually hoping Quasimodo would be so helpful as to teach him how to read.”   
The archdeacon considered this. The poor hunchback would be introduced to someone new, who the archdeacon could likely have a stronger influence on to be nicer to the poor boy. Frollo wouldn’t be showing up for at least two months. Quasimodo would be teaching The Bible to someone else.   
“Of course, I may consider holding back on my plans if I feel I’d need a favor from you later on. I just wanted to see if it was a possibility today; I’m clearing things up right now before I have to go home and rest.”   
“So that’s your little plan,” the archdeacon said. He wondered why Frollo was being to transparently obvious.   
“Not really,” Claude said, as he saw Phoebus and Gaetan arrive in front of the church to water the horses. “Captain, I take it you can handle lessons as well as patrol?” The minister quickly made his way over to them for further conversation.   
“Yes, sir,” Phoebus answered.   
Claude was in a good mood. A good mood made it easier to keep his composure and poise. When he managed to keep those around him, he managed to keep his voice down, though this never made him any less threatening, in fact, sometimes it seemed worse. So far, he had managed to keep his composure and he had nearly tricked two men into doing just what he wanted them to. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that he would definitely get away with tricking three as he had planned.   
“I heard there has been some rather odd commotion lately. Are you handling it?”   
“So far my men have had to arrest three people, so I’m ordering more soldiers around the city, sir. Nothing you need to be bothered by.”   
“Do tell me if there is anything that does need my attention.” Claude turned around suddenly, too fast for someone who thought he was an unknown watcher.   
Clopin jumped, startled that he’d been caught as he saw Claude make immediate eye contact with him.   
“You there, come here!” Claude yelled to the puppeteer. At first Clopin hesitated, and considered running away. But the archdeacon was looking at him as well, and Clopin figured that Frollo must have learned his lesson about drowning people in front of the man, and hoped he applied the lesson to beating people with sticks. It would be so much easier to keep up his façade as a silly and harmless entertainer of children if he appeared as innocent as possible. Silently cursing the statues at ground level for not being better made for hiding, the fact that Claude was speaking so quietly and Clopin had to come in closer as the minister moved farther from the church, the fact that Frollo wasn’t standing in any position Clopin could read lips from, and the fact that he didn’t already know exactly what new developments were transpiring purely because he had been out partying and Frollo hadn’t, he made his way over to the minister.   
“I heard you had some complaints about my captain yesterday,” Claude said, plucking the feather out of Clopin’s hat.   
“But—” the gypsy started.   
“I personally would like to apologize, for I have my own complaint. Phoebus, I thought I said I’d like my apprentice to learn riding, not sitting.”   
“Sir, I—”   
Not letting Phoebus get any real words in edgewise, Claude stabbed Gaetan’s horse in the rear with the tip of Clopin’s feather. The feather was an old gypsy trick, always tipped with either glass or metal in a point and could be used by the rare literate gypsy for writing out warnings and threats and more often was used to injure or kill. Gaetan’s horse panicked and nearly ran over the puppeteer as it took off, full speed, without any guidance or directions.   
Claude tossed the feather back to Clopin, who hung on to the edge of the well for dear life. “Dear me, Phoebus, I did ask you to try not to break anything during lessons.”   
Clopin winced, hoping none of the distant crashing sounds were his puppet stand as he stepped off the well.   
“Sir—”   
“Oh, come now. I broke three fingers, my arm, and my collarbone when I learned to ride.”   
“You learned to ride like that?” Phoebus asked, shocked at how Frollo stood there and smirked. He preferred the minister upset and with a one-track mind. At least then he could tell who Frollo was going to try to murder.   
“No, not really. It is quite amusing, though. Well, the most important part of learning how to be on a horse is to know how to survive falling off of one.”   
“Oh, no!” Phoebus yelled, and took off, following the trail of destruction and again forcing Clopin into a panicked dodge.   
“I believe that should put things even,” Claude said happily.   
Deciding he’d had enough of horses, Clopin decided to quit trying to accomplish anything in the surface world. He figured he’d learned all he could successfully and he would send someone else to get killed if they wanted to learn more.   
“I’m sorry, where were we?” Claude asked the archdeacon, who was still reeling from what had just happened.   
“Sundays will be fine.”   
“But there’s so much for him to learn, I’m not sure if I should really spare that much time.”   
“It would hardly be any trouble at all.”   
“But what if I need a favor later on?”   
“Consider this free.”   
“Ah, splendid!” Claude said. “I really must be leaving now.”   
“Thank The Lord!” the archdeacon whispered.   
Claude left, pausing for a second and then altering his intended course as he heard the jingle of a tambourine.


	5. Chapter 5

Phoebus’ five minutes had turned into thirty by the time he returned, dressed in full armor. Gaetan was standing at the side of the door, her hands clasped behind her back. She had solved her belt problem by tying a knot on either side of the belt, but the thing still fell to her hips and sagged.   
“As much as I hate this idea, I think you’ll do the least damage on a horse,” he said. Gaetan stood and waited for him to move.   
“You know, some sort of reaction would be nice.”   
She blinked.   
“One day with that guy and you’re acting as creepy as him!” Phoebus yelled. “Well, do something!” Gaetan cocked her head to the side in confusion. 

“Do what, sir?” She wondered if she had the right title for him.   
“Just…never mind, come on.” Phoebus walked to the stables. “If you want to talk, you can.”   
She said nothing as they entered the stables.   
Achilles immediately began frantically stamping in his pen upon seeing Gaetan. A bad haircut and a pair of pants didn’t fool the horse. Phoebus felt insulted at the fact that the horse seemed smarter than he was, but tried to calm it nonetheless. 

“Easy, easy. She’s going to leave you alone. Easy.” Phoebus turned back to Gaetan. “Okay, first rule: you leave my horse alone from now on or I’ll let Frollo—hey!”   
Gaetan stopped in mid-motion as she put a piece of old, dried alfalfa to her mouth.   
“What in the world are you doing? That’s for horses! Don’t tell me you’ve been stealing from stables!” One minute into instructing her and he was wishing he’d arrested her and ‘forgotten’ to tell Frollo. “Say something!” Gaetan took her hand away from her mouth. 

“And chickens, sir.” Phoebus put his hand to his face. 

“I actually meant something other than that.” Gaetan looked at the grass in her hands. Phoebus slowly took his hand away from his face. Blanching at the situation, no matter how insane it was, wasn’t going to fix it. Gaetan held her hand out flat, her fingers as far back as they would comfortably go, holding out the food for Achilles, who scoffed and turned his head.   
“Oh come on!” Phoebus reprimanded his horse.   
Reluctantly, Achilles accepted the peace offering, grunting at Gaetan after devouring the food to show he was still upset. “Second rule, you eat people food,” Phoebus said. “Third, start making some noise now and then, this is getting weird.”   
“Yes, sir.”   
“Close enough. Here, pay attention.” Phoebus set to teaching her how to saddle a horse and how to adjust it. The horse he chose was the smallest horse that was used by common soldiers. Achilles and Frollo’s horse were trained to listen to one specific rider and one specific rider only. This horse, however, was trained to follow orders from anyone, so long as they were holding its bridle or sat on top of it. Admittedly, this made horse thievery possible, but Frollo felt that being dragged through the city by that very horse would be a good deterrent. Whether this was true or not, the stables were always full.   
It took two tries to mount the horse, but Gaetan found out how to turn her foot in the first stirrup and Phoebus didn’t have to resort to helping her up. After Gaetan got used to the different ways of directing the horse, the two finally left the stables. Gaetan hadn’t said anything since feeding Achilles, but Phoebus didn’t like the way she looked at him; it made him feel he was being watched a bit too closely and he was afraid she’d spit in his face again.   
“Stay close to me,” Phoebus said as he mounted Achilles, who whinnied in agreement. It wasn’t for Gaetan’s protection so much as his own and the rest of the city’s.   
Gaetan steered her horse out of the stables after him. “Yes, sir.”   
“Look, stop that,” he complained. “I know Frollo was screaming nonsense about silence and obedience, but I’m not him and I don’t want you to think I am! I’ve been in Paris for two days and I just want a nice conversation with someone. I’m sure that if you’re as smart as you must be to have survived living with him, you can conjure up something more than ‘Yes, sir.’ And stop calling me ‘sir,’ it makes me feel old. Now shut up and talk!” Achilles rolled his eyes and Phoebus realized the words that just came out of his mouth. “Except for making a comment about what I just said.”   
“Women and servants are not meant to speak up,” Gaetan said immediately.   
“Well, you’re not supposed to be either right now, so you can save being quiet for when you are.” He signaled to Achilles to start his patrol around the city, keeping his horse at a slow canter for Gaetan to follow at. He still didn’t trust her, but she was his best bet at ever getting ‘Lovely weather we’re having’ without the phrase indicating he should watch out for anvils falling from the sky.   
“My father was a soldier.”   
“See, there, a nice—wait, I thought you said you didn’t know who he was.”   
“I don’t, I just know he was a soldier and left for the war when my mother told him she was pregnant.”   
Now it was Phoebus’s turned to be silent for a while. “How old are you?”   
“Thirteen.”   
“Well, if you go telling other people about that, I want you to include the fact that I was nine when I left for the war and no matter what your mother looked like I wouldn’t have been interested.”   
“I should hope not. She wanted to get married. You’re not old enough now.”   
“How about you go back to calling me ‘sir.’” Phoebus said. This girl was quickly making him insecure. First he felt stupid, then he felt unattractive, then old, now her age.   
“Are you doing this on purpose?”   
“Doing what on purpose?”   
“Playing mind games with me.”   
“Not much to play with.”   
“I walked into that one didn’t I?” Phoebus muttered.   
“Is that why you were only concerned about me afterwards?” Gaetan asked. It was startling, the way she no longer talked like a tiny child, and slightly comforting. It no longer felt like a game or like she was intentionally reticent out of hatred.   
“Are you calling me stupid?”   
“You get there in the end. So far.”   
“Thanks for the compliment. Should I be concerned?”   
“My father’s concerns were paying for wine, paying for my mother, and that nothing kept him from just having fun. You can obviously afford wine, you don’t want anything to do with my mother, and you could always have had someone else train me if you are not having fun.”   
“Right now, nothing I do has anything to do with fun.”   
“Then I do not know how to help you with that concern of yours. If you have any other concerns, I don’t know what they are.”   
“In other words you have no idea what I’m saying?” Phoebus asked.   
“I have no idea what you’re thinking.”   
It wasn’t a nice chat about the weather, but he hadn’t been hit or hit on and no one was screaming or throwing rocks and he’d sort of been complimented. Phoebus hoped that things would improve beyond this in time and that this wasn’t the best he’d ever get. He sighed. As much as he wanted to stop such things, he preferred to dance around painful subjects when it came to dialog. 

“He didn’t…um…” Gaetan gave Phoebus the same look Frollo had given her when he first laid eyes on her. It wasn’t so much of disapproval, but one of tired frustration and wondering if it was malice or stupidity that had masterminded the current situation.   
“What?” Phoebus asked.   
“You’re not stupid,” Gaetan said, turning back to focus on riding her horse. The animal jostled her with every step. She wondered how Phoebus, born with much more sensitive anatomy when it came to sitting on something moving, could stand riding for so long. There was some trick to moving with the horse which she could only manage by concentrating; perhaps it took so much mental work to keep it in mind that Phoebus might have more brain to spare if he walked.   
“I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Phoebus said. There was no chance in hell he was getting a sincere compliment from someone who looked at him the way Frollo looked at gypsies. That thought suddenly reminded him of something very important. He grabbed the reins of her horse and pulled her down an alleyway. “Look. I may not know what that damn man thinks all the time, in fact most of the time I don’t know what he’s scheming up, but I know what Frollo thinks of gypsies. I don’t think that way and while I’m training you, I’m not going to stand for arresting or hurting an innocent person, no matter who they are, understand me?”   
“The penalty for insubordination is death.”   
“Let me put it this way: I don’t care. Now do you understand me?” Gaetan’s scheming gaze changed. There was some question in her mind and Phoebus felt rather happy that finally he wasn’t the only one taking a while to think things over. He was apprehensive, though, expecting a very frightening answer from her. “I don’t care about gypsies one way or another,” Gaetan finally answered. “I don’t care about most people one way or another.”   
“Well, you’re going to learn to care about people with this job. You have to. Whatever’s going on in that creepy brain of his, even Frollo cares about people. I just want you to care about everyone the same way. If you don’t I’m going to do my best to be worse than he will. Now, do you understand what I’m saying?”   
“Yes, sir,” Gaetan said. “Maybe someday.”   
“Well, work on it.”   
“Sir?” Gaetan said, as Phoebus led Achilles out of the alleyway.   
“This had better be good.”   
“I lied,” she said fiercely. “I know where my mother is, but I ran away from home four months ago. She always said I was too expensive to care for, so I left when I found she was pregnant again. I thought with only herself to support for a while she would be able to afford a child this time around. I couldn’t go back before and I can’t go back now or my master will kill me. She was the only person I cared about and the best I ever did for her was leave.” Phoebus had stopped immediately at her first sentence. He certainly hadn’t expected a confession of anything short of murder by now. He especially didn’t expect an angry confession. Even back in the war, when someone told a story from the heart, they poured it out by crying into homemade alcohol and the anger came later. But Gaetan said it not angrily at him, but at herself. It wasn’t a justification; it wasn’t a weapon she used against others. It was something she beat herself up with and turned the bitterness of it out at others.   
“You’ll learn,” Phoebus said. When did he suddenly have a lack of people skills? “Take your time.”   
………….   
Clopin had changed the location of his puppet show to the other corner of the square. He had also changed his strategy and his stories. He wasn’t in the mood to talk about orphans and he hoped that Giselle would at least let him sit and watch her if he found her lost daughter. He spoke of demons lurking in the guise of strange omens: water that showed no reflection, cats that could only speak in echoes, and hens that crowed like roosters. He spoke of them lurking everywhere, watching, always watching. These things could not be killed; they’d only find a new body to inhabit and inciting their wrath would endanger children further, because that was the only target of these boogie men. Only by being obedient little children and recognizing the monsters could children break the spell and maybe even rescue a victim if their faith was strong enough. Truthfully, he thought the whole story was rubbish, but it was the best he could come up with, basing it on a story Giselle used to tell to her daughter. She had told it to him the night her daughter disappeared. Admittedly, he left out the part of banishing the spirits with a flaming cross and the spirits dying, but he didn’t want to encourage kids to kill animals or start brandishing fire.   
At the end Clopin asked the audience if anyone had seen any lost children, homeless waifs or translucent and lost spirits that even roamed in the daytime.   
The crowd was silent.   
“Anyone?” Clopin asked.   
One kid began to pick his ear.   
“I can’t say that I’ve seen any such things,” a familiar deep baritone said. Clopin jumped in fright and the children backed away as Frollo crutched his way over to the puppet show. 

“Go away,” he scolded the crowd of children, causing them to scatter in fear. Clopin had already had enough of the minister and he frankly had had enough of everything else right now. The gypsies were forming violently opposing factions, groups disbanding and rearranging themselves overnight, changing at least twice a day and almost always screaming and throwing rocks at each other. There was currently less street entertainment and a lot more street disruption. If anyone else were in charge of justice, Clopin would have gladly let many of them be arrested, for the squabbles were over opinions of his now-dormant love life.   
Frollo had nothing to do with the landlady barring gypsies from the brothel, but at the moment he might as well. For all Clopin cared at the moment, Frollo was the reason for all the bad things going on, including all the times he could never find a matching sock. Clopin had thrown himself into his pitiful puppet show, hoping for something to improve, and not only was his audience as helpful as a duck when one needed milk, but the minister had scared it off. Clopin needed something, anything at all, he felt he could take out his frustrations on.   
“What kind of insane asylum are you running here?” Clopin screamed.   
“I’m sorry, what?” Claude said, backing away. He hadn’t come prepared to be yelled at by a man who had painted socks on his hands.   
“Your stupid captain nearly ran me over twice and I was nearly killed by someone hurling a brick!” Truthfully it was a rock and truthfully his people were throwing them all over Paris only to change opinion or alliance a few hours later and hurl them at someone else.   
“Captain Phoebus was throwing rocks?” Claude asked. This was certainly not in his plan for the day. His plans hinged on the puppeteer staying where he usually was. He already had to make different plans now that the man had moved his puppet stand to the other end of the square.   
“No! Someone else was throwing rocks!” Clopin yelled. “I didn’t see them!”   
“And why not?” Clopin didn’t have an answer to that that would fit his mood. He didn’t want questions, he just wanted to be able to scream.   
Claude, however, knew that the gypsy usually slept most of the day after the Feast of Fools and was either drunk or hungover as well. “Sleeping on the streets, even in odd-colored boxes, is against the law, which will just lead you to the Palace of Justice.” Claude noticed the gypsy must have missed the last two days of rumors somehow, for the man was now spent of anger and staring quizzically at Claude’s legs and crutches as if they were a new form of animal. Claude hoped this would actually make things easier. “Now, I appreciate you leaving me out of your little act, although I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to accomplish, but I have somewhere to be and if you don’t move right now I’ll remind you that my throwing arm hasn’t been damaged!”   
Clopin sidestepped the minister, still staring, and let Frollo pass. 

“Too bad it’s not against the law to be a pompous a—“   
“I heard that.” Clopin fumed. Still fuming, he slipped into a shadow. If all of Paris was going to go crazy, it would be best to keep an eye on the more dangerous crazies.   
………………   
“Ah, there you are,” Claude said, making his way toward the archdeacon.   
“I wish I weren’t,” the archdeacon said. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking things easy?”   
“Actually, that was what I came to speak to you about. I must report that I shan’t be attending for a while due to the obvious circumstances, but given them I thought it was time Quasimodo got to know some other people, perhaps a meeting every Sunday.”   
“You’re allowing him out of the bell tower?” The archdeacon was shocked at the implications of Frollo’s words. At first he thought Frollo had come to confess to having murdered his apprentice and wanted it absolved as a favor.   
“Perhaps someday, but for now I thought he should meet someone closer to his own age. Besides, I can’t be going up so many stairs in this condition. Of course, if you feel it shouldn’t be allowed...”   
“What? Why, what exactly are you planning?”   
“I was planning on sending my apprentice, at least as long as he is in my service. I was actually hoping Quasimodo would be so helpful as to teach him how to read.”   
The archdeacon considered this. The poor hunchback would be introduced to someone new, who the archdeacon could likely have a stronger influence on to be nicer to the poor boy. Frollo wouldn’t be showing up for at least two months. Quasimodo would be teaching The Bible to someone else.   
“Of course, I may consider holding back on my plans if I feel I’d need a favor from you later on. I just wanted to see if it was a possibility today; I’m clearing things up right now before I have to go home and rest.”   
“So that’s your little plan,” the archdeacon said. He wondered why Frollo was being to transparently obvious.   
“Not really,” Claude said, as he saw Phoebus and Gaetan arrive in front of the church to water the horses. “Captain, I take it you can handle lessons as well as patrol?” The minister quickly made his way over to them for further conversation.   
“Yes, sir,” Phoebus answered.   
Claude was in a good mood. A good mood made it easier to keep his composure and poise. When he managed to keep those around him, he managed to keep his voice down, though this never made him any less threatening, in fact, sometimes it seemed worse. So far, he had managed to keep his composure and he had nearly tricked two men into doing just what he wanted them to. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that he would definitely get away with tricking three as he had planned.   
“I heard there has been some rather odd commotion lately. Are you handling it?”   
“So far my men have had to arrest three people, so I’m ordering more soldiers around the city, sir. Nothing you need to be bothered by.”   
“Do tell me if there is anything that does need my attention.” Claude turned around suddenly, too fast for someone who thought he was an unknown watcher.   
Clopin jumped, startled that he’d been caught as he saw Claude make immediate eye contact with him.   
“You there, come here!” Claude yelled to the puppeteer. At first Clopin hesitated, and considered running away. But the archdeacon was looking at him as well, and Clopin figured that Frollo must have learned his lesson about drowning people in front of the man, and hoped he applied the lesson to beating people with sticks. It would be so much easier to keep up his façade as a silly and harmless entertainer of children if he appeared as innocent as possible. Silently cursing the statues at ground level for not being better made for hiding, the fact that Claude was speaking so quietly and Clopin had to come in closer as the minister moved farther from the church, the fact that Frollo wasn’t standing in any position Clopin could read lips from, and the fact that he didn’t already know exactly what new developments were transpiring purely because he had been out partying and Frollo hadn’t, he made his way over to the minister.   
“I heard you had some complaints about my captain yesterday,” Claude said, plucking the feather out of Clopin’s hat.   
“But—” the gypsy started.   
“I personally would like to apologize, for I have my own complaint. Phoebus, I thought I said I’d like my apprentice to learn riding, not sitting.”   
“Sir, I—”   
Not letting Phoebus get any real words in edgewise, Claude stabbed Gaetan’s horse in the rear with the tip of Clopin’s feather. The feather was an old gypsy trick, always tipped with either glass or metal in a point and could be used by the rare literate gypsy for writing out warnings and threats and more often was used to injure or kill. Gaetan’s horse panicked and nearly ran over the puppeteer as it took off, full speed, without any guidance or directions.   
Claude tossed the feather back to Clopin, who hung on to the edge of the well for dear life. “Dear me, Phoebus, I did ask you to try not to break anything during lessons.”   
Clopin winced, hoping none of the distant crashing sounds were his puppet stand as he stepped off the well.   
“Sir—”   
“Oh, come now. I broke three fingers, my arm, and my collarbone when I learned to ride.”   
“You learned to ride like that?” Phoebus asked, shocked at how Frollo stood there and smirked. He preferred the minister upset and with a one-track mind. At least then he could tell who Frollo was going to try to murder.   
“No, not really. It is quite amusing, though. Well, the most important part of learning how to be on a horse is to know how to survive falling off of one.”   
“Oh, no!” Phoebus yelled, and took off, following the trail of destruction and again forcing Clopin into a panicked dodge.   
“I believe that should put things even,” Claude said happily.   
Deciding he’d had enough of horses, Clopin decided to quit trying to accomplish anything in the surface world. He figured he’d learned all he could successfully and he would send someone else to get killed if they wanted to learn more.   
“I’m sorry, where were we?” Claude asked the archdeacon, who was still reeling from what had just happened.   
“Sundays will be fine.”   
“But there’s so much for him to learn, I’m not sure if I should really spare that much time.”   
“It would hardly be any trouble at all.”   
“But what if I need a favor later on?”   
“Consider this free.”   
“Ah, splendid!” Claude said. “I really must be leaving now.”   
“Thank The Lord!” the archdeacon whispered.   
Claude left, pausing for a second and then altering his intended course as he heard the jingle of a tambourine.


	6. Chapter 6

A ring of people had gathered around Gaetan, who had fallen in the street. She rolled over from her face-down sprawl on the cobblestones. As she slowly checked bits for severe injuries, she remembered Frollo’s dagger and immediately stopped to check for that as well. Though Gaetan was relieved that it was where she’d left it and it was intact, everyone in the crowd either took a large step back or ran away altogether. They recognized Frollo’s dagger. Curiosity and wanting someone to complain to kept them where they were, but no one wanted to help Gaetan until they were sure she hadn’t stolen the dagger and that they wouldn’t be in trouble for helping a thief.   
Phoebus had to shove his way through the crowd; no one had done much when he’d ordered everyone to clear away because he was Captain of the Archers. He was starting to understand how effective Frollo’s lack of people skills actually kept order, although he wasn’t in the least bit interested to start acting like the man and arresting everyone for being in his way. After conquering the obstacle course of people, Phoebus rushed over to Gaetan, who pushed herself up, trying to stay off one of her wrists.   
“Are you alright?” he asked frantically. As the crowd, now bored that no one was severely injured or was under arrest, began to disperse Phoebus noticed carts with wheels knocked off, barrels smashed by the horse, overturned tables and food, hay and pieces of broken equipment scattered for several yards all around. The horse had smashed a chicken coop and terrified poultry fluttered everywhere. “Can you see straight? Back injury? Did you black out when you fell?”   
Angrily, Gaetan shoved him away with both hands, only to rub her right wrist furiously afterward. 

“I am not a child and neither are you!” Phoebus was beginning to understand Frollo’s disposition slightly. If the only people he ever dealt with had her attitude, if all he did was try to fight something that would never truly go away, he’d want to strangle someone too. But as much as Phoebus wanted to, he wasn’t someone who actually would. He just sighed and stared at a stain on his shirt he’d gotten from when she pushed him. “Yup, bleeding on me. Fine. Your head’s not that damaged and you don’t seem to have any back pain, so next time stay loose and don’t tense up when you fall. You’re getting back on that horse.” Phoebus looked around. “Or, we get you on a different horse and start again.”   
“Yes, sir.” This was a different tone coming from Gaetan. She didn’t sound like she wanted to spit in his face anymore and actually seemed to approve of what he was saying.   
“First you ridicule me, then you tell me I’m not stupid, then you tell me not to act stupid. It would help if you made up your mind and stuck with it,” Phoebus said. “And please tell me it’s the second one.”   
“You were in the war when you were younger than I am now,” she said, flatly.   
“Exactly where is this leading?”   
“You saw a lot of people suffer, didn’t you?”   
“Yes I did. I saw a lot of people suffer and a lot of people die. A lot of innocent people. Kids your age lost legs and their lives. I even had to kill a few. What’s your point? If you want to go there I’m having nothing to do with it.” It had taken Phoebus a long time, but he eventually concluded that the war had nothing to do with anyone’s intelligence, his included. It was painful when he realized years of wishing that he’d eventually find a point in it all, glory, manliness, honor, truth, justice… none of that was anywhere near the battlefield and never would be. The only thing you found there was grief, misery, pain, and death. He hoped those would only take the rare vacation to Paris and stay where he’d left them.   
“You wanted to come back to somewhere completely different,” Gaetan said. “Women my age would be seeking suitors and anyone who treated them the way my master treats me would be the best they could hope for.”   
“Don’t ever put that image in my head!” Phoebus exclaimed. He wondered if God was punishing him or testing him—he always thought there was no real way to tell the difference until you were dead and he didn’t want to find out very soon—someone nearly half his age was practically patting him on the back and telling him that the world just doesn’t work the way he wanted and he should keep his chin up, but stop believing in things like fairies and goblins. She was right and that was the very reason Frollo was going to be laughing at his expense all day. He had to start not only treating Gaetan as a grown man—neither of which he thought she was anything close to—but to give her the same thing he had and wished he never had. He had to throw her directly into the battlefield and hope she’d come crawling back alive at night and just keep repeating the process. She had to learn how not to die and she had one week before she was nothing but a wooden marker in the cemetery and very funny joke for Frollo to remind him and the archdeacon of, probably every day.   
“Riding isn’t going to help save your life is it?” Phoebus asked, hoping against all probability that there was some factor he was forgetting and that Gaetan would just politely remind him of it and tell him he was wrong.   
“No, sir,” she answered.   
Wonderful. He was beginning to think she was right about how he was silly to think the world should work at least a little bit better than it did. He was also beginning to wonder if she was wrong and he actually was an idiot. Some part of him wondered if there was something strange in the Paris drinking water and if everyone, including him, was insane. Instead of going back to Achilles as his original plan had been, he just put his hand to his temples. “Have you been waiting all day to tell me that?”   
“I thought you’d figure it out soon enough.”   
“Okay,” he said and sighed. “Go to the hospice and get yourself fixed up. Meet me back at the barracks when you’re done. I have to go do something really, really stupid.” He kept his hand where it was. He was tempted to go with her and ask for something for his head, but it didn’t hurt, he just didn’t want to think about anything. What he really needed was a lot of wine and somewhere to hide for a year.   
“It could be worse, sir,” Gaetan said.   
“How?”   
“You could get married.”   
……………….   
For Claude, beautiful and sexual were two very distinct concepts. Wondering what the vaguely musical sound was, he had followed it, having had nothing better to do. The source of a mildly amusing noise turned out to be a familiar gypsy woman. What she was doing could hardly be considered dancing and shaking the silly drum with bells could hardly be considered music, but Claude had found he could hardly move.   
Instead of heading home, he had seated himself on a nearby bench and slowly recovered from being happily stunned at the fact that the woman who had both humiliated him and terrified him two days earlier had changed into more appropriate attire—though there was definitely room for improvement—and was doing a far more appropriate dance. Her cruel dance, meant to incite the worst desires within the human soul, had been replaced by a crueler one, meant to do nothing at all but was causing a more dangerous desire in Claude. He had been set upon by a sickness that had no cure and would worsen over time. He was struck down by God with a bolt that could fell the greatest of men. Eventually, he would find himself in love, his heart played by her soft fingers the way she played her tambourine, but right now, in the mild onset, all he had was intrigue.   
Claude wasn’t one for sitting in leisure, but he’d put up with a lot of pain to enjoy today and now that he was out of mockery and tricks, he wasn’t about to get up unless the bench caught on fire—and it had to be a big fire or else he’d just warm his hands and watch people panic. However, he was reminded as to why he never liked taking time off. His mind was a disastrous jumble, remembering bits of the amusement he’d had but in random order, wondering how he could arrest the gypsy for messing with his head without getting up, wondering why she could afford such obviously expensive bangles and never wore any shoes, whether or not the pet goat’s training included housetraining, marveling at her pretty feet and hands and hair and wondering why, though thankful she wasn’t making his mind conjure up images that could endanger him.   
His reverie was broken hours later by a familiar blonde trying to get his attention.   
“Captain Phoebus, if you are here to tell me you cannot find something so obvious as a rampaging horse, I’d like to remind you that the Feast of Fools ended two days ago.” Phoebus decided that he should ask the soldiers not to mention that he gave up on finding the horse and asked them to wait it out and bring it back to the stables when it had calmed down. 

“Actually, sir, I’ve found a tiny obstacle in teaching Gaetan.”   
“How tiny?”   
“Not very.”   
Claude crossed his arms over his chest and glared at the captain. “Where’s the last place you saw him?”   
“I didn’t lose him, sir.”   
“Dead?”   
“No.”   
“Well, what could possibly be your problem?”   
“I can teach him with short swords and cinquedas, but I don’t think he should be using weapons that big.”   
“If he lost my dagger and you’re covering for him—“   
“It’s not that sir; he still has it.”   
“Well then put him back on the horse or teach him how to use it. Start with ‘the sharp end goes in the other guy.’ I’m sure even you can manage that.”   
“Well, I can, sir, but… but I never really learned close combat. Not with those sir. And I think she needs to grow a bit more to learn to properly hit someone in the jaw.”   
“Phoebus, would you please learn to explain yourself in three sentences or less?”   
“Well, you know how to fight with daggers.”   
“Is it possible that you are asking me for a favor?”   
“Very.” It was also very possible Phoebus was going to start praying to God to strike him with lightning as a change of luck.   
“It hardly seems fair that I’m paying you extra now. We can call that off and consider the whole thing even.”   
“Sounds great sir.” It sounded like three bottles of wine.   
……………..   
Most of the rest of the Gaetan’s training that day was spent listening to Frollo scream.   
Instead of immediately beginning training, Claude went into the stables, saying that it was important, regardless as to whether or not Gaetan had returned from the hospice. He didn’t speak to his horse, but he stroked it, putting great force on his hand as he touched the massive destrier. The horse was obedient and did what was asked of it and so it deserved a minute of his time. He did not understand the creature’s affection towards him. To him it was odd for a creature to desire the happiness of another creature of a different species purely for the sake of invoking happiness from them. He believed in friendship and romance; he just never bothered with either much because he didn’t like most people or there was too much risk involved in trying. However, having an animal for companionship made no sense to him and an animal seeking companionship from people made just as much (or little). He cared for his horse, but in the way he intended to care for his apprentice: it was trained, given food, shelter, and any other essentials; he would give it what he thought would enforce loyalty to him—he wondered what he should substitute for apples and chunks of sugar when it came to humans—and when he thought it needed and deserved it, he showed it affection—again he wondered how to deal with humans, for he was not about to scratch someone’s ears or neck.   
There was another concern of his. His destriers tended to become similar to him in personality and were rather reclusive and tended to get restless if they went too long without seeing him. He had survived, which is entirely different from avoiding, the plague. Although it was far less virulent than centuries before, he was off duty for three weeks and the horse he owned at that time had destroyed tons of equipment by chewing it to pulp and had smashed it’s way out of the stables four times, and somehow found its way to his house twice. He did not want his horse to go around breaking things. At least not now. When his horse bit at the air and curled it’s lip, threatening Gaetan that it would do the exact same to any body parts of hers that got close enough, Frollo commented that he’d found why the horse seemed to dislike Phoebus’s, claiming it didn’t like feminine males. This lead to an argument with a lot of finger-pointing, name-calling, and tangents from both men while the horses tried to join in. Eventually neither side won—or even seemed to remember what the fight was about—but somehow Frollo had conceded that if Phoebus shut up, he did his job well and Phoebus conceded that if Frollo shut up, he was good at keeping order in the city single-handedly. When the fight ended, Frollo left the stables and insisted on lecturing Phoebus as well as Gaetan on Kampfringen and Ringen am Schwert, detailing all he knew of their history and masters. He went on to speak of Fior Di Battaglia and how it influenced modern battle and how even the city’s hired soldiers were trained in its techniques involving polearms. Frollo just got louder and angrier as the two just stared, equally confused as to what he was saying, neither wanting to tell him that they had no idea what he was talking about because half the words he uttered were Italian or German and his voice, built for the softer ululating words of French and Latin, stumbled over the foreign languages like a blind and drunk donkey with three legs. Both began to understand him when he began to talk about the basics of the styles: grappling, punches, holds, pinning, and controlling balance, both of you and your opponent and both with and without various weapons. Satisfied that his audience was showing at least some comprehension, he sat down on part of a fence by the stables and excused Phoebus to return to duty. He began to instruct Gaetan on different ways of holding a dagger, rapping her once the head when she wasn’t fast enough and kicking her to the ground with his good leg when she dropped it.   
Phoebus left as quickly as he could, wishing he’d suggested getting a dog instead, for then he’d get to see the creature bite the minister.   
…………   
“Stop,” Claude commanded Gaetan, whom he had practice flipping the dagger from one type of grip to another. He slowly pushed her back with his crutch. When she was as far as he could push her, he pulled his crutch back and leaned it against the fence. “Now,” he said, crossing his arms, “charge at me.”   
Gaetan stood where she was, wide-eyed and dumbfounded, and nearly dropped the dagger.   
“I said ‘charge at me’ I did not give you that to play with. Now rush at me with the blade as I ordered!”   
Gaetan took a deep breath and ran at him.   
“Too slow,” Claude yelled, grabbing his crutch from his side and smacking her with it. “Try again.”   
Gaetan backed up and tried again, this time faster.   
“Your hand is too high!” Frollo yelled, catching her wrist and throwing her backwards nonchalantly. Gaetan picked herself up and tried again, growing angrier. Claude smiled slightly. She was becoming more focused, more bloodthirsty. If he could hone that wolfen spirit in her, he could someday send her on his own path of chasing down the distant and unreachable fire of corruption within his city. She fixed her gaze on him and leapt at him this time, flinging her whole body into the attack. Claude grabbed her wrist as she pulled it back to prevent from actually hitting him with one hand and punched her in the gut with the other. She went limp and fought hard not to scream or choke on blood as he slowly pushed her wrist down, forcing her arm to bend backwards against her elbow and shoulder joints. “You’d best conquer that fear you have of me. It will be far worse than this if you can’t strike a killing blow. Your opponent will show you absolutely no mercy, which is the same reason why you will get none from me! The next time you hesitate, it will be far worse, and I warn you that I am very skilled at pain. If your life is in danger, theirs is forfeit, no exceptions, ever! Perhaps someday you will be lucky enough to take someone in alive, but it will never happen if you can’t stay alive yourself!” He released her arm and she spat up blood as she rubbed her pained shoulder. She stood up unsteadily and he bashed her down with his crutch before she could collect herself. He needed to bring her temper to a boil, to see her spirit rise like steam from underneath a human desire to hold back. There are chains that hold every person in place and it takes a slow and steady insanity to struggle free or a raging fire and a powerful hammer strike to tear them away in an instant. He could be the forge, tossing log after log on the fire, but she needed to smash those chains herself and he’d teach her to, no matter the cost. 

 

Gaetan panted as she slowly rose to her feet; her breathing speeding up, threatening to build up into a raging roar rather than slow down for calm. She had managed the fierce, burning glare he wanted to see in her, but he still doubted she’d ever come close to what he needed in action. She stood up all the way, no longer caring about him, but thinking of how to hold her small and tired body, forcing every muscle into a compressed spring to go off at just the right moment. She wiped the dripping blood from her mouth, only smearing it across her chin, and finally attacked. Claude leapt off the fence as her hand brought the dagger down, lodging it deep in the wood of the fence.   
Leaning on the post of the fence, he made his way around it so there was nothing between them. “Much better. Again.”   
Gaetan tore the dagger from the wood and spun at him, only to fall to the ground as her feet tangled around his crutch as he tripped her. “Watch your feet. Again.” She tried to rise on her still hurting shoulder, and was kicked in the face when it gave out. “Faster. Your opponent won’t just be standing over you, doing nothing.” Gaetan pushed herself up by her good shoulder and glared, trying to crane her head to make eye contact. Never shifting her gaze, she shot her arm forward, aiming her dagger at his foot.   
His crutch blocked the blade, but it had been stopped less than an inch away from his soft leather shoe. “We are getting ahead of ourselves now. A good strategy, but I want you to fight on your feet. Now get up and try again.”   
………………   
Gaetan started to rise from the dirt, but Claude put his crutch on her injured shoulder lightly to stop her. He looked up at the sky. Lighting in the city was always dim, crude, and amounted to nothing outside. It was swiftly beginning to get dark and at a few high-noted chimes from the cathedral, he pulled the crutch away. 

“Enough. We should go back. Can you walk?” Instead of answering, she slowly pushed herself up, wobbled for a moment and caught her footing. She was bloody, but only from superficial cuts. Mostly she was dirty, sweaty, tired, and dizzy. Her whole body ached, but overall her arm was feeling better. Claude had never wanted to raise a child in the first place, even if it was his—he felt guilty on occasion that he could never bring himself to obey God’s command to ‘Go forth and multiply’—and he had already been forced not just to raise Quasimodo, but to try and connect with the boy as a friend. He never wanted to, and most often the boy’s silly fancies bored him. He found the easiest way to raise a child was to raise it like a dog. He encouraged Quasimodo to be a rather independent one, so long as it knew where the fence was and he could have fun digging or carving or whatever and leave him alone. However, with Gaetan, he wanted a dog that would stay very close to him and copy his way of thinking. Either way, it was essential to reward as much as it was to punish. “Good boy,” he told Gaetan. He smiled and ruffled her frazzled hair with his hand, petting her head softly.   
Exactly as he hoped, she smiled and followed him home.


	7. Chapter 7

It was more than an hour after dinner when Gaetan opened the door of Claude’s house.   
“Sir—oh, thank God, it’s you!” Phoebus exclaimed, trying to whisper.   
“He’s not seeing anyone right now,” Gaetan said as Phoebus grabbed her by her arms. “Sir, I don’t know where the horse is. I’m sure you can find it yourself eventually.”   
“What? No, I’m here to get you out of here.”   
“Why, sir?” she asked, yanking her arms away.   
“You can’t possibly want to stay here! Look, don’t give me any of that ‘I’d have to get married’ stuff! He’s insane!”   
“You work for him.”   
“I’m a grown up.”   
“Then you’ll be tried for stealing someone’s apprentice.”   
“No I won’t,” Phoebus said. “Nothing’s official yet. No papers have been signed and not even he can get around that one. He told you you could leave when you wanted, so I’m helping you.”   
“I don’t want to leave.”   
“He’s not nice!”   
“Living on the street isn’t nice.”   
“He hits you!”   
“It’d be worse if I were arrested for stealing grass from the stables.”   
“You’re dressed in rags!”   
“I already was.”   
“You threw up today!”   
“At least he feeds me real food.”   
“You mean you want to stay here?” he yelled. He wasn’t going to get her out of here, so he didn’t care if he was heard.   
“I live in a real house. I get to eat more than once everyday. I sleep indoors. I can have a real bath now and then. I’m not in as much danger from strangers now that I’m not a woman anymore. Goodbye, sir.”   
“But—“   
“Thank you, sir.” Gaetan closed the door, ending the conversation. Forever, she hoped.   
Claude stepped out of the washroom, already dressed in his robes, hose, and shoes. It was cold in a stone house, especially with wet hair. He shook his head to toss some of the water out of his grey hair before using a towel to dry it. “Who was at the door?”   
“Captain Phoebus, Master.”   
“What could he possibly want? I hope he found that horse already.”   
“He wanted me to explain something to him.” Claude rolled his eyes and sighed. Was she improving or was Phoebus getting worse? He’d heard so much about the man’s abilities and achievements in the war. 

“Go clean up,” he told her. He figured that Phoebus must simply be having the same problems he was having, but lacked the opportunity to tell her to go away or stay out of sight as well as the skill to assume she’d deal with any problems she had on her own or tell him if she couldn’t. For instance, having her draw his bath hadn’t been nearly the disaster he thought it would be because she simply stayed out of the washroom after the tub was filled and that was that. Skirting around each other was proving a lot easier than he’d initially thought.   
It was convenient that she was so dismissible, both from his mind and from his rooms. It was too early to speak with her of his confusion over the gypsy and having to wrestle with it on his own felt like some sort of divine punishment. Every time he closed his eyes, every time he tried to meditate, every time he tried to concentrate alone, all he got were bits of a twirling skirt, clangs of bangles striking each other, green eyes, hair like a soft black cloud, and a delicate hand twisting and turning in strangely saintly positions. He could have dealt with all those images. He could have managed to shoo them away or let them play themselves out until they had nothing new for him, but they were intermingled in other images, more frightening images. Long bare legs, oscillating hips, breasts straining to free themselves from tight fabric, the outline of a navel showing through a dress that flowed like sweat over her dark body. If only these images could be separated from each other, not intertwined in a Gordian knot he was unable to strike through. Her hair was for a moment a shower of soft silken strands with the curling grace of incense smoke that wafted through church halls, only to transform into a thick viscous mass he could feel slipping over his fingers like boiling lead, the imaginary touch setting his nerves aflame in some strange desire to be lost in that molten, oozing mass. He’d burn, but he felt he’d revel in the fire, his loss of the physical nothing compared to what he’d gain in the sensual. He could see his hand taking hers and she’d drop that tambourine in fright as he forced her to the ground and pinned her, easily defeating her in a struggle to force her to stop her witchcraft, but instead of nothing more than a clean and simple match of two combatants, he saw an erotic tackle and heard her soft, feminine screams and cries of defiance slowly ebbing into those of submission.   
He had realized earlier that day that he had kept her scarf that she’d left on his neck during her dance that felt like a siren’s song in bodily motion. Now he was tempted to find a way to destroy the evil talisman, but fear of what evil magic he’d release by doing so prevented him. It had to be witchcraft. There was no other explanation he could find. He knew what he was commanded to do with witches, but this was a sly trick that he could not so easily smother. He had no proof and announcing what she had done would make the city think he was insane. This was not a straightforward attack on him by the gypsies, and he was sure that if they’d gone to such lengths, no doubt they had booby-trapped their little trinket they used to cast it upon him. He could not openly try to purify it, he could not give it to another person for surely it would find it’s way back to him and probably kill them in the process, he could not burn it, and he could not toss it away, lest doing so would bring him worse luck. If it weren’t for the fact that she barely seemed to acknowledge him at all—for she had paused in her dance for a moment that day and stared at him, utterly shocked upon noticing him, but only to shrug and go back to her dancing soon after, seeing no guards around to arrest her—he would have considered the thing a familiar through which she was constantly spying on him.   
“Lord take it, I am distracted tonight!” he yelled at himself just before he heard the door to the washroom open. To his comfort, Gaetan was not only dressed, still wearing the bodies that hid any evidence that she was female, but paid him no attention and instead focused on drying her hair, which was resembling a giant overstuffed mop that had been used years past its usefulness.   
If only all women were more like Gaetan he would be having no problems. No curves, dishwater eyes that looked at you instead of asking you to look at them, and even if they stood in front of you, you could banish them from your mind whenever you wanted. There had to be some way to keep himself safe in the same way from his gypsy tormentor. “The gypsies!” he suddenly whispered, a thought suddenly dawning on him. “Come. Sit,” he ordered, seating himself in a chair and gesturing to the floor next to him.   
Gaetan dropped her towel to her shoulders and immediately went to him. He moved the stool himself with the end of his crutch and she immediately set herself on the floor next to his chair.   
“You may speak freely, but stay on subject. Now, you were out on patrol with the captain today. What exactly was going on that would warrant needing more soldiers in order to keep the peace and handle arrests?”   
Gaetan remembered the discussion with Phoebus in the alley earlier. She owed the man much for his favor, even if he thought he’d thrown her to the pigs. She also appreciated the chance to be talked to by someone who just wanted a simple conversation to pass the time and if he ever got over his silly thoughts he would probably be very interesting to listen to. But keeping secrets from her master was stupid, especially when it was about the goings-on in the city, given his job. “There were many groups of gypsies throwing rocks, master.”   
“At?” Claude asked. “You are beginning to speak like the captain and I advise you to stop it. For all I know, they were juggling.”   
“They were throwing rocks at each other from across the street, mostly, master. Some attacked each other. Other people were getting caught in the middle of the whole thing.”   
“The gypsies are attacking each other under broad daylight? This is highly unusual, given how they act. They are secretive, all thieves, tricksters, and liars. But they are not the kind to sacrifice one of their own to achieve their goals. This is most strange.” Secretly, Claude wondered if Esmeralda’s spell of distraction was purely to keep him from knowing his enemies’ solidarity was crumbling.   
“None of them wanted to explain what the fight was about. They just hated each other and kept trying to fight even after they were arrested.”   
“If only I knew what troubles were causing such things! Oh, their heathen Court of Miracles must look like the inside of my Palace of Justice. What I’d give to see it just for a second. But what in the world could cause dissension like this?”   
“Master?”   
“Yes, what is it?” It was obvious he had to explain something to her. Well, if she had any stupidity in her, it was best to tear that weed out immediately by the roots.   
“What is a Court of Miracles?”   
“Oh, such a lonely, ignorant child you are,” he said, putting a hand on her shoulder. His white eyes glittered for she was just as eager to learn from him as he was to mold her mind into a copy of his own. “The Court of Miracles is a sinister, evil place. It is a hidden lair where every gypsy in Paris gathers together to share their stolen prizes and slaughtered trophies. I have searched for that place for twenty years and it is the one thing they would rather go to the gallows for than do more than speak its name. I have sent dozens of spies to find it and all have been found dead weeks later, each in a different part of the city. What? What is it?” he asked in annoyance, squeezing her shoulder. His words had had nothing close to the desired effect on her and she was looking at him the same way he looked at her when he first laid eyes on her, having trouble believing the inconceivable ridiculousness of what lay before her.   
“It sounds like a fairytale, master,” she said quietly, trembling in his grip. “It sounds like a lie, a trick to distract you. Even my grandmother heard of elves.” Claude did not want to admit the Court of Miracles had become an obsession of his, nor did he want to admit he’d never considered it a clever rouse, let alone an age-old one that made him look like he was demanding how to get gold from unicorns when questioning prisoners. But he could feel her shivering in fear, waiting for his hand to strike her like a spider who had already caught a fly in his web, but took its time as she struggled. She had a cynical, untrusting mind, and yet she met his words with a growing hunger for them, as if she wanted to dig sharp claws into his mind and never let go until she had learned all there was within it. 

 

Claude loosened his grip for a second, only long enough to let her know he was not about to strike. He needed her to recognize his approval at her efforts before he corrected her or only the lesson would take, but there would be no loyalty and without loyalty she would have too much free will, which would only lead to her asking the wrong questions and going against his ideals. He gripped her shoulder firmly, but gently, similar to how he had petted his horse. She had to feel the gesture of affection and yet feel the strength he had within him, just to tell her who was pack leader. “The Court of Miracles is real,” he said, using one finger under her chin to make her see the adamancy in his eyes. “It is a part of Hell that cloaks itself somewhere in Paris. Not even God’s hands can reach within. It is my duty to bring His Great Benevolence and Justice to it. If you are alive a week from now, you shall share the honor.”   
……………….   
If Claude could have seen the Court of Miracles, he would have laughed. Although the Court of Miracles was decorated so colorfully it dimmed the great rose windows of the Cathedral during a bright and fiery sunset, there was no gaiety happening today. What were many small incessant quarrels yesterday was one giant riot tonight.   
Clopin’s business with Giselle had caused a split between his people, but being united by ties of marriage, families, and friendships, the rift was an invisible river constantly changing beds, separating one solid army into dozens of groups, each with a slightly different opinion, all angry amorphous masses of people who were constantly changing sides due to culturally inflicted bonds, thus each person changed their mind at least twice a day. Now it was unclear as to whether anyone remembered any allies or even bothered with them anymore, or even if they had their own opinions anymore. People were fighting each other from across the vast hall, screaming, shouting, striking anyone they could reach and having no fixed target, resorting to throwing anything they could get their hands on at the other side of the crowd. 

 

Their king, the man all their debates stemmed from, was close to wishing Frollo would find their secret sanctuary and take them all away. It was not out of hatred, but out of desperation and several bruises and one burn from the crossfire.   
“Enough!” Clopin screamed. “I didn’t even know there were this many rocks in Paris! Giselle is out of the picture! There was no reason for you to fight before, and there certainly is no reason now! Am I the only one who knew that there were twelve arrests today? The new captain has called in more soldiers and I think Frollo’s finally lost any sanity he ever had! He’s appointed an apprentice!”   
The screaming tempest of people silenced and stopped, like a storm standing still.   
Personally, Clopin thought the old man was bored being unable to ride and hunt people down himself, so he’d found a little boy to torment literally to death and that he only called the child his apprentice so that no one could take his toy away.   
The first reaction anyone had was to demand that the boy be killed immediately, choking the weed out before it took over the entire garden. Clopin’s first reaction was to lay down the rule that no one was to kill the child. It would be the perfect excuse for Frollo to go around setting gypsies on fire in the middle of the street. Clopin’s second reaction was to explain how the metaphor made no sense and was more strangled than anyone they’d ever hung on the gibbet. His third was to ask if anyone had ever even seen the child before. The crowd was nearly silent, a soft rumble of whispers and mumbles shaking it throughout, making the crowd look like a bubble shaking before it popped. Rumors began to sprout and before they could bloom into superstition, they were clipped away by the king. Some thought the boy was a conjured as a pact with the devil, a demon in disguise. Clopin complained that even if a demon had a reason to be so tiny and skinny and to have allowed something to eat its hair for an hour, why was Frollo spending all day torturing it, for he had heard of stories of the boy’s lessons that day. Besides, witchcraft was what Frollo accused them of doing, not what they accused him of. Thinking like him would just get them all killed, Clopin reprimanded.   
If magic was out, perhaps it was the boy of a soldier. But no parent seemed to claim the boy. None of the French townspeople recognized the boy and seemed just as surprised that Frollo had an apprentice. There was a theory that would have had more merit if there was a lot less giggling and snickering throughout the discussion of the boy being Frollo’s own child. The only woman Frollo had spent more than five minutes around was his cook and she was at least twenty years his senior, for she reminded him that she was his elder a few times in the past. By now Clopin was sure that the people giggling like schoolchildren were the ones who spurned the discussion on, so there was a lot of debate as to whether it was possible he had ever conceived a child no one ever saw before with a woman who by now must be a million years old (Clopin in his younger days had thought up a prank to ‘celebrate’ the judge’s birthday, but he never even learned what century the man was born in and soon gave up). The giggling only got worse and to Clopin’s dismay some comments were a bit lewder. Then it was pointed out that the woman had been married, widowed only three years ago and had since mourned her husband annually. Eventually Clopin had to sit and wait the giggling and by now limerick-chanting out and when everyone was out of breath he said that because it was such a humorous idea, Frollo couldn’t possibly have done it because there was nothing funny about the man, unless you counted his hat.   
The only rumor that was given the chance to divide, multiply, and evolve was that Frollo had taken the child from the orphanage, though no one could settle on a believable reason as to why that particular child when there were more strapping boys of the same age still there. Eventually the rumors would die once the gypsies got wind of the matron of the orphanage angrily yelling that she had no idea who the child was and people should stop asking why she let what was happening continue. 

 

Clopin ended the meeting, reminding his subject that he’d personally deal with anyone who killed little children, even Frollo’s, that they were a better people than the minister made them out to be and to save energy for fighting the soldiers, not each other. He sighed as most people resumed giggling and trying to make their rhymes dirtier than they already were. Clopin sat down, dangling his legs over the gibbet stage and began to sulk. Frollo had called the gypsies vermin, dogs, rats, mongrels, jackals, and philistines. He wondered what kind of animal a philistine was, but he was sure Frollo was wrong; all those animals were organized. Sure, they were a monarchy, but he listened to his people, every one of them, even the children. Their king was a poor man who talked to a puppet to make children laugh. He had wandered off at last year’s Feast of Fools so drunk he could hardly walk and had forgotten his name drinks ago and was draped in the arms of a lady of the night, despite the fact that it was still day. When the hangover left he returned, having had one of the best nights he couldn’t remember. It was a romance between a fugitive from the law, harboring thousands of other fugitives and with no money in his possession, and a woman who was lucky to have all her teeth and hair and unlucky enough to have a daughter she had unsuccessfully tried to drown and a job she had unsuccessfully tried to leave. It was a sorry state for a sorry bunch of people. But that didn’t give them an excuse to act like violent four-year olds…well, worse than that because Clopin had been able to control violent four-year olds to some extent a few times.   
“Have you ever heard the story of the four ravens?” a female voice said behind him.   
“Esmeralda!” Clopin exclaimed happily and leapt to his feet. Esmeralda’s voice suggested good news and at least he could see her goat perform a trick or two and he’d be able to pet it before he felt he had to return to moping. 

“That’s some sort of English story, I think. I have enough trouble figuring out how anyone liked these French ones.”   
“Something about a king who had children. A sorceress changed herself to remind him of his long lost wife and she married him. He was so in love with her, he couldn’t stop her from turning his children into birds.”   
“I take it this wasn’t because she wanted pets.”   
“The king was the only person who she didn’t use magic to change.”   
“Wouldn’t it have been easier?”   
“But then it wouldn’t be true love, and true love can break any magic spell. You know that.” He sighed. 

“Sometimes I doubt it.”   
“Do you trust me?” she asked.   
“Esmeralda, sometimes I trust you more than I trust myself. You’re a wonderful friend and so far you’re the only person who has had no problems about Giselle other than sharing worries about how I’m going to get her money and you’ve completely avoided siding with any group of crazies.” He sniffled and Djali butted him from behind. “I said person!” he yelped, rubbing his behind.   
“I may have a plan.”   
“I don’t think turning me into a bird will help. Not for long.”   
“Not you. And not for real,” she said. She put both hands on his shoulders and her voice became serious. “I can’t tell you, but I need you to trust me. No matter what, just trust me.” Every time she spoke like that, there was a knife-like quality to her voice. Those who didn’t know her well were often afraid they’d actually be stabbed.   
Politics never came between them. They talked to each other as equals and treated each other as such. Good or bad, they treated each other’s choices in life as nothing more than that: not a representation of the community or some ideal to uphold. His only concern over who she slept with was whether or not he had to chase them with torches and pitchforks later and her only reaction to him losing Giselle was to comfort his broken heart. 

“I trust you Esmeralda. I trust that whatever you’re doing, you’ll tell me when you’re really in trouble.”   
“Thank you,” she said. “I will, I promise. But don’t do anything before then. No matter what!”   
“Should I be worried already?”   
“No, you shouldn’t. Don’t worry Clopin. Some day your prince will come.”   
“I hope you’re—wait, I thought I was the prince!”


	8. Chapter 8

Gaetan was up before the dawn each day. Claude would leave her to learn riding, which was at first falling and later was something too scruffy and undignified to appear to be riding compared to the captain, but not quite staying on the horse, while the minister led his destrier around. He tied an end of a rope to the reigns and the other end to the fence. With his master around, the horse calmly walked in circles, trying to urge Claude to ride by nudging the man with his nose. “I understand, boy,” Claude would say. “But I can’t. Stop it.” The gypsies had hired spies to watch the man and the child. As much as the gypsies wanted to cite Frollo as having gone absolutely batty, talking to his horse did not quite qualify since he never expected it to reply. As much as they thought he couldn’t even bear the touch of the stuff, feeding chunks of sugar to the creature didn’t qualify either.   
Later Gaetan would return, constantly thrown and beaten down while trying to fight him. Through wrestling, daggers, pins, grapples, punches, and swinging a short stick—Phoebus still insisted she wasn’t ready for a sword, but in truth he wasn’t ready for the amount of chaos he’d have to deal with if he did give her one—the gypsies were unsure as to whether or not Frollo was training or trying to kill the boy. The native French noticed as well. They nicknamed the boy Chiot—‘puppy’—for Frollo would send the boy away with the captain and he would dutifully return to his master’s side. Frollo would knock the boy down to the ground, sometimes hitting him for not rising soon enough and each time the boy would try to follow his master’s orders and when the sun began to set, the two would walk home, the boy eagerly following at his master’s side. Everyone began to swear it was the truth that he’d once said ‘Good dog’ to the boy. It was obvious that no creature ever before ever loved his master as little Chiot.   
The gypsies had also nicknamed the boy: ‘Malarrimo’, meaning ‘bad arrival’ or ‘close to danger,’ for surely he meant something ominous, despite his appearance. Was Frollo building an army? Would the boy ever master whatever any of his training was, and if so, would that mean they would have two sinister, unbeatable enemies to contend with? Was Frollo taking to beating children by the barracks for fun or punishment? The questions of how to deal with Frollo’s new apprentice, whatever his ambitions for the boy were, echoed secretly throughout the Court of Miracles. This time, the river of mistrust was not so fickle. The river slowly etched a canyon, deeper and deeper between the people on either side. Every week a gypsy would say farewells and sever ties as they felt was the best way. Some in anger, some in disdain, some even in pity. Everyone on either side knew that someday the river would become apparent, coursing with blood that may even reach the upper streets of Paris. This was war. It was a secret war, a guerilla revolution to explode from under the feet of their ignorant king.   
Previously, every decision Clopin had made when it came to Giselle had started a new argument. There were always two separate sides, one claiming right and one claiming wrong and then it was four when he made a new decision and the opinions mixed but the people separated. To wander off with a native French was a betrayal out of drunken stupidity or it was a need to add new blood to their clan’s kingship. To return was idiocy and stirred thoughts of selling secrets to the enemy or it was love to be swooned over and defended. The fact that she was a prostitute was spat at or admired. The child was a mistake of following animal instincts for too long or a promised new ruler for his people. Giselle’s abandonment was deserved punishment or a sad and tragic ending. Distrust and patriotism were slowly pulling away from each other like curds and whey. But although it was a woman that had incited their split, it would be a boy that the two would fight over, each wholly united against each other. Solomon’s Israel was lost, portended by the king demanding a child would die. The great nation of the gypsies in Paris would be lost over a child the king demanded would live.   
…………….   
Gaetan was sent to church early Sunday morning with a note she couldn’t read, a basket with unknown contents, and the same green clothes she’d been wearing since she began her trial apprenticeship. She had tried to mend the vest once, but Claude had ripped them from her hands hard enough to sting. He tore the stitches apart, shouting that he would not stand for her to wear such shoddy workmanship while in his house and that the mending was worse than the holes.   
She sat in the backmost pew and waited out the long and boring sermon. It was just a long diatribe on being afraid of God. She already knew God had sent her a great many things to be afraid of and had done so for years. She felt she was the last person who needed reminding. The sermon ended hours later and people filed past her, some glancing at the note Frollo had pinned to her front. Occasionally, she would glance down to see if she could understand any of it, or if there was a stain on the letter, but to her it was a piece of paper with frilly scribbles and it refused to be anything else.   
Gaetan jumped as a hand fell on her shoulder. She wasn’t as relieved as the archdeacon had hoped when she noticed who was next to her. He led her halfway around the cathedral and opened a door to a long spiraling flight of stairs. Her only instructions she had already received were to listen to the archdeacon and that someone would begin her lessons on how to read and write. The archdeacon did nothing to clear things but, merely telling her to go all the way up the stairs and to ‘please be kind to him’ With that, Gaetan was shooed onto the staircase and the door was softly closed behind her.   
For a moment she stood on the stairs and wondered about her situation. To her, the cathedral was giant and scary. It was a huge tomb with windows that let in images of people dying and suffering or condemning or ignoring, but never any significant amount of light. The halls echoed and smelled like someone trying to cover the smell of a corpse with dried flowers. The chants were morbid and the building gave her the impression that it was a deadly labyrinth with the monsters her mother had told her of, waiting to take her away and enchant her. Last she checked, notes from ministers didn’t stop spirits.   
She steeled herself and forced herself to climb the stairs. The staircase was the darkest part of the church she’d ever seen. The nave and the chapel were already dark enough, with no light from outside because of the thick winter clouds. The candles only burned away the darkness within inches of themselves and the transept was even darker, having fewer windows and fewer candles. Here, there were no windows and no candles. All she could do was wonder how far up she was going and what there was at the end of the staircase. The higher she went, the more she wanted to turn around and leave, and the more afraid she was that she would and what would happen to her next. “Hello?” she began to call out. She heard no answer and kept walking, remembering she still had a dagger, but also remembering she wasn’t much good at using it. At last she came to the end of the stairs. To her surprise, the stairs ended in an anticlimactic giant attic—at least that was the best she could make of it all. “Hello?” she called out again. For a long time she heard nothing but dust falling.   
Something moved in the darkness. Gaetan held the basket close, wondering if she should draw the dagger. Trembling, she turned and walked in the opposite direction.   
The floor gave way to a set of rafters just ahead and from the ceiling hung giant, monstrous bells, but it was all hidden in the darkness. Gaetan froze as she finally noticed the giant cone of iron before her. The size of the bell was so intimidating she failed to notice the floorboards stop and that there was air below half her foot. From far away, the bell would ring a bemusing tone, threatening impatient and imposing silence in a call to piety. But up close it was a giant monster, a demon lying in wait, teeth glinting high in the darkness of the cone. Her mother had never sugar-coated the stories and she remembered that such things reveled in bone-crushing, flinging glistening pieces of gore as far as they could throw them, and of keeping their prize alive as they devoured them.   
Something heavy hit her shoulder and she screamed. She closed her eyes and tried to step back out of the thing’s grasp. She spun on her heel, but suddenly there was nothing underneath her feet. She fell underneath the great maw of the bell…and stopped.   
Realizing she wasn’t being tortured by any demons or smashing her head on anything hard, Gaetan opened her eyes.   
A large, strong hand hauled her out of the darkness and set her gently on the floor near a candle while another set the basket down as well. Before her eyes acclimated to candlelight, the hand holding her tore off the paper pinned to her front.   
“Who are you?” both she and her rescuer asked.   
They both just stared at each other and took in the sight of the other, shocked that there was someone else here. Gaetan was covered in scratches and bruises from her training sessions. Her clothes were no longer the soft grassy greens they had started out as, but were mottled in several types of dirt, dust, dried blood, and horse spit. Several parts were ripped and the holes were growing bigger. Her clothes were adequate, but in far worse shape than those of the man before her. Her hair hadn’t improved in shape and the erratic way it tried to part itself had just made it worse than before. The fact that she was small and looked like she could almost fit through a closed doorway sideways added to her appearance of someone who’d been lost under a rug for months.   
The bell ringer hoped the note would explain where this strange boy had come from and why he was here, especially since he had not seen his foster father for days.   
Gaetan’s mind had conjured images of monsters and wraiths seeking out living flesh to feast on. At first, the candlelight splitting everything into deep shadows and bright hellish light scared her, lighting up a strange face and setting odd eyes aglow. But watching the side of the bell and seeing its side lit up in a giant reflection of the tiny flame, it looked like a portal to Hell itself and the stranger in front of it did not manage to qualify as one of its evil spirits in looks. As her eyes adjusted, the candlelight grew softer and so did the strange man’s features. Though he was taller than her, as were all the men she had come to know, he was rather short, his back hunched downwards at the shoulders and at first he seemed awkwardly stooped down to try and look her in the face. His face was misshapen to say the least; he had a crooked jaw line and a strangely formed nose. His eyes were large and green and she could see nothing bestial within them, but she wondered how well he could see anything. Above one was a large lump, which pushed its way down partway over one of his eyes. The other was assaulted by his bangs of dark red hair; there didn’t seem to be a strand that had no intention of staying in that part of his face, even when he tried to wipe them away to read her mystery note.   
“My name is Quasimodo,” he said, discarding the note. He picked up the candle and the basket and started to turn to walk away from the bells. “You shouldn’t be afraid of me, especially if master Frollo sent you.”   
“My name is Gaetan,” she whispered, instantly clinging to his large arm and casting a fearful glance at the giant bell.   
“The bells will not hurt you either,” he said, smiling. The letter had been a strange one. Frollo had said that he couldn’t visit for a while due to an injury and he had been forced to hire an apprentice. Aside from his master wanting him to teach the boy to read, that was all. Quasimodo had barely a clue what an apprentice was, but the letter said his father hoped the two of them might one day become companions—so long as the boy’s ‘proved himself to be skilled enough.’ This meant the only thing he could learn of the whole situation was from the boy himself.   
“You live here?” Gaetan asked, staring at the darkness and the statues and the dust.   
“I never leave,” Quasimodo answered. “My master does not allow it. He says that this way I’m safe from unkind people outside.”   
Gaetan stopped following and stood still.   
To her, his words meant a chance at relief and relaxation in her tiring week and she was shyly trying to find a way to grab the opportunity. To Quasimodo, he had just said something wrong.   
“I mean, other than you,” Quasimodo said. “Master Frollo wouldn’t send any random person here. You must be a very kind boy, I’m sure.”   
“That’s kind of a lie,” Gaetan said, and suddenly regretted it. She winced, imagining the large man’s anger at the words.   
Instead, her only answer was defense rather than offense. She opened her eyes as he said “But my master would never lie to me.”   
“I didn’t mean to…I mean…it’s more of a secret than a lie,” Gaetan said, hugging herself. She shouldn’t have opened her mouth just because she wanted to open her chest restraint. “I’m a girl.” She suddenly wondered if Quasimodo would possibly be as accommodating as she had initially hoped. She was, after all, lost in the dark with him and somewhere back there were those horrible bells and the floor was missing. There were a million things he could do, angered just as many men would be over a young girl impersonating one of them. ‘This must be what it’s like to be Phoebus,’ she thought.   
“It said ‘boy’ on the note,” Quasimodo said. He was wondering why she was so upset.   
“That’s in case anyone else read it,” she said. She had no idea what the note had said and at one point wondered if it was a list of groceries or chores for her. “No one’s supposed to know… I just thought that if you were all alone, you wouldn’t tell anyone else. Or care…at least at first.”   
“You don’t look like a girl,” Quasimodo said. He’d never been good at conversations, even with things that weren’t supposed to talk back.   
“I can prove it…I mean, I need something to change behind. Unless you’d rather I was a boy.”   
Quasimodo gave her a very confused look. Even he, practically living in a cave, didn’t think gender could be dealt with like lighting a candle or blowing it out. “I’d prefer you were whatever it is you really are. It would be a lot less confusing.” He gestured for her to follow her. “Why is it a secret?”   
“Women aren’t supposed to dress like this,” Gaetan said, stepping behind a curtain Quasimodo gestured to. Behind it was a makeshift bed, hidden away from the rest of the dusty attic. She quickly undressed, heaving a sigh and breathing easier after taking the bodies off, then she began to throw the rest of her clothes back on. She was actually thankful she never inherited her mother’s hips—or any other curved anatomy—which her mother constantly scolded her over. She had no hope of getting married as a girl and she certainly wasn’t going to get married as a man. At least now it would be her choice. Not that anyone else would ever want to ask her what that choice would be. “They aren’t supposed to do men’s work. It’s a rule somewhere. I’m not sure where its from, but it’s important.”   
Quasimodo could in fact remember exactly where the rule came from, but he’d always thought it was only for people wandering around where there was a lot of sand.   
“Women aren’t allowed to be apprentices, either,” she said, moving the curtain aside as she stepped out. “Unless we want to learn sewing or…other stuff.” She had no idea what women apprentices learned, but she knew they still did ‘women’s work.’ She also knew that she was incompetent at anything relating to cloth. The best she could do was wear her clothes the right way around or tie knots.   
“You don’t look much different,” Quasimodo said. She didn’t look any different and wouldn’t unless her shirt got wet or was blasted against her chest by the wind.   
“Even if it’s not much, I’m not supposed to look like this at all. Thank you, though.”   
Quasimodo shrugged. To him, gender just said what shape a wooden doll should be and he never thought much of it beyond that. Apparently, he wasn’t going to understand it any further, so it was probably best to give up and ask Frollo when and if he ever returned. “What exactly is an apprentice?”   
“It’s someone you teach your job to,” Gaetan said. She noticed the shadows weren’t so harsh now and began to relax. “When you’re not teaching them, they do chores and in exchange, you give them food and a warm bed and clothes.”   
Quasimodo was actually somewhat relieved, though he didn’t want to admit it to himself. He wasn’t one for jealousy, but he was often prone to envy. The difference being he never really tried to take something from someone, but he did wish that the things other people had weren’t forbidden to him. He couldn’t care less about jewels or rich clothes or horses. He did, though, long to go outside and talk to people without repercussions. At first he’d felt slightly threatened that Frollo had taken in another boy, but he realized now that his own accommodations were free. He had asked for the bells and a reason to go down in the church. He could have stayed even more reclusive than he already was and never done any chores within the cloisters and left the bells silent and prey to dust.   
Then again, having a brother was a nice thought…and a sister was practically the same thing.   
“Well, this isn’t going to eat itself,” he said, holding up the basket. “Come, I can show you some things…that is, if you’re interested.”   
“There aren’t more bells up there, are there?” Gaetan asked.   
“No more bells, I promise,” Quasimodo said, picking up the candle. He motioned to the ladder and she smiled, following him as he led the way. “You’ll get used to them someday. I promise.”   
…………….   
Many people were thinking they liked Sundays. Quasimodo had been given a gift of a foster sibling, something he never dared dream of. She was impressed, but not much interested in his dolls. She made up for it, though, by her intrigue of wanting to read after he told her a few Bible stories and so long as no bells or gargoyles loomed directly overhead, she could slowly be taught to climb amongst the church decorations. She loved listening to him and as he never stopped her from saying what she wanted, she was surprised there was no anger anymore because he truly felt they were equals. She felt herself thinking the same thing.   
Phoebus appreciated the fact that the riots had died down and with most people in their homes, all he did was get a cat out of a tree and he’d been lucky enough to have the cat actually be docile. The cat turned out to belong to Jacques, though, which made the job a lot more uncomfortable. Embarrassed as he was over having to technically undress partially by taking off his armor in front of the doctor, and that the cat was named Apollonia, he decided it was a still a disaster-free day.   
Claude was having a worthwhile day himself, deciding that later on he’d teach Gaetan about laws and punishments as he went over the paperwork of what to do with the gypsies in the Palace of Justice. He figured that if he just put them together in one cell they would fight on their own and do his work for him. Later, when his leg was better and he could watch from a distance, he could let them out and see how confused they were and laugh at them.   
He was also happy that he’d set up his apprentice and Quasimodo as playmates. Raising children really was like raising dogs. The two of them could entertain each other and all he had to do now and then was watch over the playpen to make sure they never escaped. He chuckled, imagining one of them bringing him a dead squirrel.   
Children really were puppies, just without fleas, thank The Good Lord. He’d gone back on his word about the bed, telling her it was barbaric to sleep on the floor and that he’d already bought her enough things. This way he could also blame her if there was anything he found ‘odd’ with using another person for warmth and he never had to admit that was his original motivation. The thought of having to possibly share rooms with strangers had kept him from traveling out of Paris his whole life, but now he wondered why he’d never bought himself a cat or two for the winter nights. Puppies, cats, children…same thing, but with different training and children needed clothes because they had no fur. Jacques shared the bed with his kitten; he could share his with his puppy, and dogs did seem to enjoy sleeping at the feet of their masters.   
…………..   
One person was not enjoying Sundays and never had. Clopin detested Sundays because no one would come to see a puppet show on a religious day. God takes one day off to relax and for some reason no one else can have any fun every seventh day. As far as Clopin was concerned, God should have taken longer to create the world. There would be fewer days people would waste in church, he wouldn’t be so bored, and it was all wrong anyway and God was long overdue to start fixing it.   
This Sunday was the worst and best Sunday he’d ever had. Giselle had left him a present, heartwarming and sad. The baby was wrapped in an ugly blanket that was badly decorated by little baby… somethings, probably what a crossbreed between a donkey and a weasel looked like. It had been strung up on one of the beams of his puppet stand and was sleeping soundly, even as he took it down to hold it. Fatherhood was indeed a wonderful thing, Clopin decided, holding the sleeping baby boy. There was something about holding the tiny thing in his arms and pressing it close that made his heart beat faster. Something so helpless was utterly dependent upon him for everything now, and was his, truly his. To him, it was a sweet, adorable, tiny thing created purely out of his and Giselle’s love.   
To an completely unbiased observer to whom neotony had no effect, or perhaps just a doctor who’d been up for more than an entire day and preferred his little kitten and wasn’t amused when it had run up a tree due to the mother’s screams, the baby looked like a giant potato. The coneheadedness of the newborn had worn off and it was no longer red and gooey.   
As happy as Clopin was to see his own child, whom he thought was the cutest one he’d ever seen despite having known it for one minute while it was asleep, he was suddenly filled with sorrow. Giselle had left the child here, hoping he’d find it in time before someone else and had run back to her horrible job in her horrible room to horrible loneliness. His job had barely provided enough money to feed himself, and even without any luxuries whatsoever, he stole half of his food. He had a bit of string, half a dried sausage, and a pebble he’d found in his shoe in his possession and along with the baby, it was the most he ever had all week, unless he counted Giselle.   
“Esmeralda, I could sure use that prince you—that’s it!” he exclaimed, smiling. “I’ll name you Prince. You’re going to be respected and that’s that. Besides, it’s a happy name. None of this depressing stuff; it’s not right for children.”   
Even though it had no clue as to what his father was saying, Prince chose that moment to wake up. Then he chose that moment to scream.   
“Whoa!” Clopin yelped. “Yes, nice set of lungs you have.”   
The baby pulled at the fringe on his shirt, jingling the bells.   
“I get it. I don’t have those. Would you mind waiting for—I guess not. I’m hungry too; let’s go see if we can’t find a way to make you quiet again.”


	9. Chapter 9

Quasimodo sat on the railing of his own personal balcony and stared at the stars and felt that they were his own personal things as well. Why not? He had his own personal friend and his own personal happiness for once. Just as the stars tried to twinkle out the purple darkness around him, he tried to hold onto his feeling of contentedness and elation and drive away a worry that had found its way into his head at such an inconvenient time. 

 

He didn’t turn around as could hear the cacophonous banging of his friends approaching. They were loud, quarrelsome, and went where they pleased and still he seemed to be the only person who ever thought they were alive.   
“Well, it certainly seems you’ve found yourself a little…well, a little something,” Victor said happily.   
“Emphasis on little,” Laverne said. “Any smaller and she’d be knocked around by his figurines.”   
“Yeah, and she’s so skinny, if she held her arms out, she’d look like the cross with a bird’s nest on top!” Hugo joked.   
“She’s nice,” Quasimodo said, trying to prevent any real insults.   
“Nice?” Hugo asked. “That’s it? ‘Nice’ is what you say about… well, I guess she’s not your type.”   
“She’s no one’s type!” Laverne yelled, smacking Hugo’s head. “She’s what, three?”   
“Thirteen,” Quasimodo answered quietly.   
“Close enough!” Laverne yelled. “Try any of that and she will be scared of you!”   
“So where’d you find her?” Hugo persisted, nudging Quasimodo with his elbow. The bell ringer tried to scoot away, already disturbed by the previous insinuations and not wanting to hear more. “A box of crackers? Maybe you can try again and find a hot blonde!”   
“Master Frollo hired her. He was hit in the knee and he needed her to do his work for him,” Quasimodo said, hoping to hint that there was a potential problem.   
“Well, I don’t have any knees and I can get my work done. Maybe these pigeons will land on him, now,” Laverne complained, grabbing a bird in emphasis and throwing it. The bird woke up immediately and flew back to its roost.   
“Good thing he didn’t hit his head, huh? You could have wound up with a lousy goldfish!” Hugo said.   
“Whatever his reasons are, I’d say this is rather nice of him,” Victor said. Quasimodo had always been annoyed at how the gargoyles could carry on conversations with him without him.   
“I’m worried about her!” He shouted.   
“I don’t see why,” Victor said.   
“Probably that she’ll get stuck in the cracks in the street,” Hugo said.   
“She said Frollo would get rid of her if he got angry with her.” Quasimodo said, his voice a whisper at first and growing steadily louder. “I may never see her again! She kept saying something about how she might not come back but didn’t seem to want to talk about it. I’m worried about her!”   
Laverne shoved Hugo away to make her way closer to Quasimodo. “He’s gonna be off his knee for a while if he hit it badly enough to need someone else to do his job for him, isn’t he? Usually he just comes back the next day and yells about stuff,” she cajoled, patting his knee.   
“She has a point,” Victor said, holding Hugo in a headlock and covering his mouth while the other gargoyle flailed and struggled to get free.   
“I don’t understand what it is,” Quasimodo said.   
“He’s lucky he found her, even if she has to be a he,” Laverne said. “I sure wouldn’t wash his windows, no matter what he hurt. If he gets rid of her, he’s got to find someone else or start getting off his bony butt!”   
“Did she say how long she had already worked for him?” Victor asked, letting go of Hugo and setting a friendly hand on Quasimodo’s arm.   
“She said it’s been four days so far,” Quasimodo answered. “Why?”   
“I’m sure if she’s spent that long with him and neither of them has decided to call it off or kill the other one, she’s craftier than she looks. She’s bound to be back. I don’t think she’d have it any other way. You’re all she’s got. She’s lucky to have you, boy.” Laverne poked Quasimodo’s side to emphasize her point.   
“And he’s lucky he didn’t get a goldfish!” Hugo complained, loudly. “I hate those things.”   
……………   
Two more days passed and Gaetan’s week was up.   
The previous night had been spent in uncomfortable silence. Claude had decided to let her prepare for the morning by herself and ignored her as she stood terrified in a corner while he finished reading his new book.   
She kept her eyes fixed on him the whole time and tried to back away into her corner further as he closed his book and stood up. 

“I’m sure you can remember how important tomorrow is,” Claude said, gently setting his book down on the table and gathering his crutches. “If you live past the morning I finally sign your papers. I know what you’re thinking, and I’d actually get some sleep if I were you. Don’t worry. I’ll wake you up before we start.”   
Gaetan fell to the floor and hugged her knees. Strategy, planning, fighting… she had barely learned any of them. She’d never touched him in their fighting sessions. How was she going to stop him from besting her in a fight to the death? Despite his words, she tried to fight off sleep, only to fail, just as she knew she’d fail by the dawn. She was not as weak as she thought, though, for she leapt to her feet as she heard his door close.   
“I hope you’re prepared,” Claude mused, drawing a dagger. “I should warn you: running won’t save you.” Immediately Gaetan ran for the door, ignoring his words.   
But he was there in an instant, slamming his crutch loudly across the wood. She skidded to a halt and turned to flee in the opposite direction, desperate for more speed as he dropped the crutch and reached for her, flipping the dagger in his other hand to bring it down.   
He grabbed her shoulder and his hand shot down her arm, twisting it and pinning it behind her back. She fought the urge to close her eyes or cry as the dagger bore down. She tried to struggle free, but to no avail. She thought she was going to die, she knew she was going to die, but when the blade tore at her skin, she felt something burning in her as if her whole body had been set on fire. She was suddenly numb to everything, to the pain, to the fear, to the floor beneath her, to any danger at all and her hand shot up and grabbed his wrist.   
She managed to surprise him enough to shove the dagger away from her neck, but he soon began to fight her, his strength greater than her adrenaline-borne ferocity and in the shaking fight between them he began to gain ground. Gaetan threw herself backwards bodily, her elbow smashing into him sharply. The dagger was gone and his hand released her as he swung his hands to steady himself from the blow. Gaetan used that moment to bring her hands together in one giant fist and spun to strike him with all her seemingly unnatural and unholy might. She knocked him into the wall and his injury prevented him from stopping himself from sliding to the floor. Gaetan could hardly see through her furious haze and barely recognized him now, but he was the only target she had. She tore the dagger from her belt so fast it almost slipped from her hand and raised it above her head, ready to strike. But with the immediate danger gone, reality began to ebb its way back into her mind. She suddenly realized what she was about to do and she was overwhelmed with terror, this time with no saving grace to help her. She took a step back and dropped her weapon, bringing her hands to her mouth as she began to cower. She felt she was going to cry once she heard her punishment for trying to kill him in her fury.   
“Don’t you dare think of apologizing!” he screamed, poking her with his remaining crutch. “Or I will have you whipped before I do kill you. If you’re going to prove your usefulness finally there is no point in throwing it away. I’m signing your papers tonight; don’t do anything stupid in the meantime.”   
Gaetan began to pant, trying to catch her breath which she hadn’t noticed she held in. She was so relieved she thought she might faint. “I need you to be prepared to fight with spirit like that at any moment if I’m going to send you out on patrol, and never to forget that. From now on the only thing you have to worry about as your life is concerned from me is if you break the law.” Seeing that his words had the desired effect of both reassurance and threat and the two were understood properly, he smiled momentarily. “Go clean up. You can go buy breakfast somewhere; I want to send you out as soon as possible.” Gaetan nodded proudly and said nothing. She didn’t look at him as she walked past him and closed the door. 

 

Claude reached for his fallen crutch. He stretched him arm as far as he could, but it was still a foot away. Almost cursing, he leaned forward, concentrating on his balance and his leg, only to suddenly pull back as the door burst open and the crutch was thrown across the floor in the commotion.   
“Where is she?” Phoebus screamed, panting and poised with his sword. The man stopped in confusion and looked around, finally spotting Frollo on the floor. He already thought the man was crazy and there was too much at risk already so he didn’t bother asking.   
“Do you need some sort of alarm to wake you up, Phoebus?” Claude complained. “You’re too late to do anything.”   
Angrily, Phoebus brought his sword back, growling at the minister.   
Claude slipped the head of his crutch under Phoebus’s legs, then yanked it close. The T of the crutch caught Pheobus’s foot and knocked the man over as he tried to bring the sword down.   
“Phoebus, would I be having trouble getting up from a clean floor if she were dead?”   
“Knowing you, I didn’t care,” Phoebus said, standing up. “But I wish you’d tell me things like that earlier.”   
“I’ve been around you for too long. Have you been drinking?”   
“No, I’ve been worrying,” Phoebus said. Drinking implied fun, not losing sleep over imagining his superior murdering helpless kids.   
“Well, don’t ‘worry’ about such cheap stuff. It smells like your horse urinated on you.” Claude tried, very unsuccessfully, to stand with one crutch. “Hand me that crutch. I’m actually glad you’re here,” he said, with no intonation in his voice that actually implied he was happy at all.   
“Okay, now I’m scared,” Phoebus said, slowly going for the crutch across the floor. “Did you hit your head?   
“I’m sending her out on patrol, after a short debriefing. I want you to tell the soldiers.”   
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes’” Phoebus said, reluctantly handing over the crutch.   
“How small of words do I have to say this in?” Claude asked, pushing himself up while trying to push away from Phoebus’s offered hand for help. “Don’t touch me first off.”   
“I can get that one, sir!” Phoebus said, pulling his hand away. “But—“   
“I may not have had much success at it, but I’ve been avoiding your protests all week. I don’t want to hear them now. She’s going to be in my place until I return. I want her to get to work immediately; I’m not running a day care or a university. I trust her, and I am giving you an order, those together should be enough for you.”   
“They are, I’m just—this is a bit of a shock.”   
“She won’t be arguing over it,” Claude said stepping away from Phoebus,   
“That’s because she’s weird—“ Phoebus realized that Gaetan had been listening in on their conversation and only noticed after Frollo moved. “I should go.”   
“Yes, you should. I’m not entertaining guests now,” Claude said.   
“I don’t think you could ever entertain anyone ever,” Phoebus said and let himself out. He paused on the stairs, still trying to take in the gravity of the situation. It was like being lost inside a giant pink cloud. It was ridiculous and the fact that it was real made it frightening, not funny. Most of him still refused to accept it as true.   
“Ah, good. I want to speak with you,” Claude said, bending down and patting Gaetan’s hair. “You’re going to be doing real work now, so I want no dawdling and no slacking, you hear me?”   
“Yes, master.”   
“You’re in charge and I want you to act like it at all times. Your duty is to keep the peace, which means no holding back in any situation.”   
“I’ll do my best, master.”   
“Don’t do that, do what I would do,” Claude said, shoving a few coins into Gaetan’s hands. “I want to hear every detail of your day so you can improve at what you’re most lacking in. And get a haircut, it looks like a trod upon cabbage. Now go on, meet up with the captain when you’re done and don’t bother with anything else, I’ll handle it.”   
“Yes, master.”   
“Chin up. You really do have no idea how much you’ve earned today.” Claude’s hand gently patting her back didn’t reassure her as much as he thought it did.   
………….   
“As you all know, Frollo has hired an apprentice,” Phoebus told the troops. “This morning he decided that Gaetan—okay, fine, Chiot, sheesh, can’t you remember names?—has graduated from training and the boy is officially standing in for the minister. Would you all stop giggling?”   
The entire troupe of soldiers did exactly that. They burst into roaring laughter so hard they needed the help of their polearms or friends to keep from falling over.   
“Do you mind?” Phoebus yelled.   
Apparently they did. He leaned against the wall of the garrison, waiting for everyone to start asphyxiating or give up.   
“I’m waiting,” Phoebus said. “No one’s leaving until I finish.”   
Eventually the laughing quieted, though never truly died   
“Yes, haha, I get it. Get it out of your systems now, because if you say it to his face it’s not just him you’ll be answering to but Frollo as well and he’s already feeling worse than usual.”   
The room was suddenly very quiet.   
“Good.” Phoebus said. “Now, I’m still your captain, but you report to him. If you have a complaint, I’m sure the boy will gladly bring the message to his master who will sort things out immediately. And don’t stand there confused, you’re soldiers! Start acting like it!” 

 

Phoebus left the troops to be shocked and confused on their own. ‘And Frollo thinks I’m behaving improperly over Gaetan…’ Phoebus thought.   
He was just in time to find her mounting one of the horses she’d taken from the stables. “Nice haircut,” he said, hoping to start smoothing things over.   
Gaetan shrugged. Her hair had been neatly trimmed into a pristine set of bangs halfway down her forehead and the rest fell to the tips of her ears. Then the hair had figured out the trick and set to work at flying everywhere at once. Gaetan seemed to be born with an aura of scruffiness. Armor would develop creases if she wore it.   
“I’ll be right back,” Phoebus said, and went to get Achilles from the stables. “Oh, no,” he muttered loudly, riding out of the stables and finding Jacques waving at him. Why couldn’t people wait in line and take numbers to give him a bad day instead of all trying at once? “What could you possibly—what in Hell happened?” Jacques was half-dragging a very unhappy man with a bloody bandage over one eye behind him.   
“I’d tell you not to take the Lord’s name in vain, but that’s hardly the worst I’ve heard. Especially all day!” The last part he was loudly directed at the injured man, who just groaned. Jacques turned to Gaetan, and smiled. “Nice haircut. See, you’re getting used to that horse already! I heard somewhere it’s just like having sex.” Jacques paused.   
Phoebus wanted to cry.   
“It is?” Gaetan asked.   
“No, it’s not!” Phoebus yelled.   
“So, what’s it like?” she asked innocently.   
“I am not explaining that to you!” Phoebus screamed. Now he wanted to cry and run away.   
“Can I go to jail now?” the injured man complained.   
“I meant horseback riding.”   
“It’s like riding a donkey, only bigger,” Phoebus grumbled.   
“But then, if it is, how exactly did Frollo hurt himself so much learning to ride?” Jacques asked himself.   
“Can I please go to jail?” the man wailed desperately.   
Phoebus wanted to join him there and cry. Forever.   
“Well this is what you get when you try to rob me!” Jacques yelled at the man, who actually did cry. “It’s not like I’ve done either, so you shouldn’t take it to heart,” Jacques said to Gaetan, then turned to Phoebus. “Well, at least one saying is true.” Jacques pointed at the man next to him, who was cringing, frightened of another horrible bit of insight. “It’s not like I knew those scissors would hit him in the eye. You can arrest him now.”   
“Yeah, about that… You gotta talk to him about that one,” Phoebus said, nodding in Gaetan’s direction.   
“Him?” Jacques asked. Then he remembered the whole fiasco that was the reason she was a he. “Oh, right! Wait...”   
“Not this again,” Phoebus whined. Now he understood how Frollo felt.   
“You’re in charge?” Jacques asked Gaetan who by now seemed to want to bore a hole into him with her gaze. “Look, you’re a smart kid to have lived this long with that guy and you seem to have cured yourself of being rather gravity prone, but maybe you should tone it down a bit.”   
“I was told not to do that,” Gaetan said, as steely as she could.   
Jacques backed away and looked at Phoebus, silently pleading for help.   
Phoebus shrugged. “It’s official. He signs the papers tonight. If Frollo says he’s in charge, you can try to talk him out of it.”   
“Me?”   
“I’m trying not to talk to that man, let alone in or out of anything,” Phoebus said.   
“Well, maybe you can take it easy just for today,” Jacques said, only for Gaetan to continue trying to set him on fire purely by glaring at him. “He’s got the armor and if he hits his head, it’s not like he’s going to hurt anything!”   
“Hey!” Phoebus complained.   
“No point in getting hurt without being on the payroll, right?”   
Gaetan’s expression didn’t change.   
“He’s doing that damned man’s job already!” Jacques shouted at Phoebus and wandered off, abandoning the frightened man with Phoebus and Gaetan.   
“Please kill me before he does anything else,” the man said.   
“I think he’s suffered enough,” Phoebus commented, looking at the sobbing man.   
Gaetan turned her hateful gaze to Phoebus.   
“Oh, we’re back to this now?” Phoebus asked. “What did I do now?”   
“We should at least report it,” Gaetan said. “But I wouldn’t send him to the Palace of Justice. He’s more or less paid for his crimes.” She signaled for her horse to move and it trotted off.   
“We are back to this,” Phoebus said and signaled to Achilles to follow. “Hey!” he called out. “Hold up!” He had to catch up to Gaetan instead. “Look, don’t take this the wrong way, please. As much as I don’t want anything to do with the guy, I agree with him.”   
“I listen to my master now, not you,” she said. “He told me I am not allowed to do that and you can’t convince me of going against him.”   
“I’m not trying to!” he said.   
She stopped her horse immediately.   
“Before you take any of this personally, let me finish. I don’t think you’re ready yet and I don’t care if he does because I don’t think he’s ready yet. Mostly I don’t think I’m ready for any of this yet.”   
“I have to be.”   
“I know. I know you can’t go easy on me, but try to be accommodating at least.” The only thing he wanted less than to go back in time to being nine and going to war again was watching someone else do it. If his commanders put up with him for years they must be saints.   
“You wouldn’t take orders from me,” she said, sullenly. All her anger was spent. As much as Frollo could yell at the man for hours, Gaetan couldn’t be mad at him for long. He kept doing things to try to fix everything, and his inability to say precisely what he wanted to say made it even harder. It was almost impossible to believe the man was a soldier most of the time.   
“Depends on what they are.”   
“I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do,” she whispered.   
“Yell at people, that’s about all he does,” Phoebus whispered back.   
“You realize you’ll have to call me sir, this time around.”   
“Oh no I’m not! Not even Frollo could make me do that.”


	10. Chapter 10

Phoebus and Gaetan didn’t talk much for the next few days. It was too awkward for either of them already and they were given little chance to slowly let things sink in. The soldiers’ unease, the citizens shock and refusal to call Gaetan anything but ‘Chiot,’ the gypsies chanting songs in Andalusian and Spanish all shoved their wish to feel normal further and further into their own heads, buried under dread and frustration.Every attempt at conversation fizzled away like trying to light a wet candle. A little girl who was now a man and a man who had no idea what he was now couldn’t stop thinking of their situation as just that and thus never managed more than three words to a sentence per hour at best.   
The first day was spent in boredom and doubtfulness. After a long lecture on the importance of asserting authority and demanding respect for it the following night from Frollo, followed by two well-aimed rocks the next day, things were just as awkward, only much quieter.   
After one arrest for illegal gambling in the street and resisting arrest by refusing to be ordered around by a small child, two rocks which resulted in two black eyes, people were either too afraid or too embarrassed to try anything.The quiet and awkwardness reached its peak when Claude got bored standing around and leaning against the fence as he watched the horse show just as much restlessness and boredom. During the night, Claude gave her lessons, lectures, or even more training. But in the day he was bored. He was glad he didn’t have to yell at someone every five minutes, but he had long ago finished all his paperwork, which was the only part of his job he could do these days. Well, there was no law in walking one’s horse in the streets.   
…………….   
“Hey!” Esmeralda screamed, wiping the splattered remains of a snowball off her face. “You stupid kids!”   
Three gypsy kids chased each other around haphazardly, completely oblivious to anything or anyone around them.   
“Malarrimo’s coming!”   
“Can’t get me!”   
“There was a rock in that!”   
“I told you, watch out for Malarrimo!”   
“Oh yeah? I’ll get you with a horse!”   
“Knock it off!” Esmeralda yelled, grabbing two kids as they ran to grab Djali, who butted the third off his feet, even more angry about being used as a ‘horse.’   
“You’re not our mommy!” one of the kids screamed.   
Djali knocked the kid over again as he tried to get up.   
“Well, you’d better be thankful about that!” Esmeralda yelled, holding the two kids up at eye level. “Or I’d be throwing things worse than rocks at you! Now get out of here!” She dropped the kids and lightly smacked them as they scrambled away.   
“And don’t you dare—“ she was interrupted by another snowball to the face. “…throw that.” She tried to run after them, but after one step, she was stopped by two riders on horseback. “Malarrimo!” she yelled, seeing the apprentice and the captain. “I mean—uh…” She really wished that of all the hundreds of gypsies at least one would have bothered to mention the boy’s real name.   
“What does Malarrimo mean?” the boy asked. It was hard for him to seem as authoritative as he wanted, given that he was years from his voice ever breaking.   
“It means, uh, ‘raven.’”   
The blonde next to the boy shook his head. Phoebus had had a mental romp through Frollo’s memory lane that made him want to go speak to Jacques and then hang himself immediately after. He settled for burgundy that tasted like someone had fermented a rotting fish in an old boot and added a dead rat for flavor. To replace Gaetan’s disintegrating clothes, Frollo had given her a set of black clothes. Frollo had argued that he hadn’t actually specified any color whatsoever from the tailors, so it wasn’t his fault. Frollo commented that the color was useful in that it didn’t show dirt and by ‘dirt’ Phoebus was sure he meant ‘blood.’ Phoebus could have dealt with everything perfectly fine—fineish—if Frollo had stopped talking after he mentioned that he never really did have any clue about the rules of colors and said his mother had insisted ‘black went with everything, whatever that means.’ Phoebus was positive that Frollo was doing all this on purpose because just aftwerwards Frollo had said ‘I guess it must be a woman thing.’ A short while later, Phoebus scared his horse half to death by trying to force the mental image of Frollo as female out of his head by banging it against the wall of the stables.   
The fact that Gaetan, looking half-dead with the black outfit clashing with her light skin and dirty yellow hair enhancing the fact that she looked like a scarecrow falling apart was named after a carrion bird, Phoebus didn’t want to be on the same continent when Frollo learned his nickname, which was probably ‘old buzzard.’   
“My name is Esmeralda,” she introduced herself in a way she though was polite. To her dismay, the older man was looking at her cleavage and the boy was looking at her goat.   
“You wouldn’t know where Claude Frollo is, would you?” she asked, hoping the males would start paying attention to her words, or at least her eyes.   
“I’m serving in his place for now,” Gaetan answered, finally looking her in the eyes. “I don’t stop snowball fights.”   
“Actually, I wanted to talk to him in person.”   
“I think she’s insane,” Gaetan whispered to Phoebus, who was too concerned over Frollo’s name and the fact that chaos always happened when someone said it to ogle Esmeralda anymore.   
“I think everyone is,” he whispered back.   
“He… I…uh…” Esmeralda tried to find something to say. “I think he might have something of mine.”   
Gaetan and Phoebus exchanged frightened glances, hoping the other would say something and convince them that the idea of Frollo having something a very curvy and barely dressed woman owned didn’t mean what they thought it meant.   
“I think I want to try some of that stuff you drink,” Gaetan said.   
“You are nowhere near ready for—oh, sweet saints, you live with him, don’t you?” Phoebus asked. “I don’t think they make anything strong enough, but let’s go see.”   
The two rode off as fast as they could.   
…………   
It was almost pleasant, walking his horse through the city. Everyone gave Claude lots of room and no one even looked at him, let alone talked to him. However, for the last two hours, he’d had the distinct feeling that he was being followed.   
After stopping to water his horse at a well and wondering why he couldn’t have tried this one, close to a tavern, several dungheaps, and a chandler, twenty years ago, he found out who—make that what—had been following him.   
“Oh, it’s just you,” he muttered to a familiar goat.   
Claude’s destrier gave an angry whinny to tell the newcomer it wasn’t welcome.   
“Oh, hush!” Claude told the horse. He didn’t need a livestock fight on his hands. “Stop following me. Even a blind man can tell the difference between me and your owner at a distance. Go away,” he told the goat.   
The goat grabbed the bottom of Claude’s robe and tugged, trying to lead him away.   
“Stop that! I am not edible!” he yelled, yanking his clothes from the animal.   
The destrier bent down and glared at the goat, which was smaller than its head. The destrier let out a loud snort, sending two large steamy gusts from its nostrils, sending Djali running in terror.   
“I guess that’s what I get for putting this in my pocket,” Claude said, given a handful of alfalfa to the horse.   
It had proudly defended its master against he strange creature and was now being rewarded. It was still a good horse, even if the man didn’t ride it anymore.   
…………..   
The river hadn’t washed everything away yet. There was a small fringe of people in the middle. They kept their mouths shut, afraid the two sides would come together momentarily to go after them before going back to fighting each other.One woman knew she had to pick a side soon someday. It was just her and her little boy in their little shack. She could go to her mother or she could go to her husband. Whoever she found, she’d leave the other, probably forever.   
“Mommy!” her son yelled as he ran into the house.   
“Stop running in the house!” she scolded.   
“But mommy!”   
“And stop yelling!”   
“But—“   
“You got snow everywhere! Go stand in the corner!”   
“But mommy!”   
“What could possibly be so important?”   
“I saw Esmeralda talking to Malarrimo! She was asking him where Frollo was! She wanted to see him!”   
“What have I told you about lying?” She raised her spatula to smack the boy   
“I’m not lying! I saw her! And she tried to get him to feed her goat!” the boy squealed.   
“Are you sure! Are you absolutely sure?” the woman whispered, grabbing the boy.   
“Mommy, you’re hurting—“   
“Are you sure! You know how dangerous saying things like this is!”   
“That’s why I’m telling you mommy!” the boy began to cry. “Are we going to see grandma?”   
“No, we’re going to see Daddy.”   
“But you said it was too dangerous—“   
“Playing with him is even worse! Come on!”   
………………………   
Soon half the gypsies knew of Esmeralda’s betrayal and thought that the other half knew exactly what she was doing and was responsible.One group convened in one of the more permanent huts, a lookout watching the king and his loyals, making sure they suspected nothing. Something had to be done, and with Esmeralda so close to the king, no doubt they’d all be fed to the minister’s horse, which had almost eaten the goat.It was up to them. They weren’t going to stand by and let Clopin hand them over to the French just because he couldn’t keep his pants on around one of them, and they were not going to let an already oppressive minister torture them vicariously through a child.Obviously, they couldn’t get rid of Frollo, but maybe they could take out his attempt at making another one of him. Nothing that cruel old man did would go unpunished if they had anything to say about it.One man volunteered. He had to keep his wife and son safe, especially now that they had come to their senses and joined them. He’d send a message to the king as well. This was still a war.   
……………..   
Gaetan slowly pushed the door open, hoping to silently slip inside. She froze as the door creaked when she’d pushed it open only an inch.   
“I’ve heard stealthier donkeys than you. Get inside, now!” Claude yelled.   
Gaetan shoved the door open and crept in like a dog with its tail between its legs and rubbed her head. Ashamed, she stopped and looked up at him as he walked over to her. When he was really mad, he came to you.   
She didn’t flinch as his hand struck her across the face. “Two weeks! I do everything for you and in two weeks you turn into a disgusting chamberpot of a person by drinking! I could smell you from behind the door. What could possibly have possessed you to touch the stuff! You smell like a tannery on fire!”   
“Phoebus said it might help…” Gaetan whispered. Her head hurt worse and she had barely swallowed a sip, most of which went straight up her nose as she gagged. “But I kinda spilled the bottle on myself, master.”   
“Phoebus!” Claude yelled, rapping her on the head. “If you need to know how to act like a man, ask me, not him! What passes for manly for him is a dead pig left out in the rain. You are supposed to have breeding and refinement, to learn how not to be like you were when I found you! You are going to learn etiquette, and you are going to learn it now!” He grabbed her arm violently and held on tighter as she tried to pull away and dragged her away from the door. “I warned you about going back to your nasty ways. The next time you do, you’re cleaning the floor with a broken arm!”   
“There was this gypsy, master! She was saying scary things about you and—“   
“If someone says something you don’t like, punch them in the face, don’t go into a tavern!” He angrily tossed her to the floor. “I know I told you to fear those people, but what could possibly frighten you about what they have to say about me? It’s just a trick to encourage disloyalty; you should be more cunning than to fall for such things.” Now they were performing witchcraft on his apprentice. Next they’d be charming his horse. That was probably what the goat was about.   
“She said you have something of hers, master,” Gaetan said. She wondered what he’d do to her now that she’d told him, but she didn’t want to see what happened if she tried to wait it out and he found out later. She never wanted to relay a message to him from the gypsy girl again, especially now that his mood suddenly changed.   
“What was this gypsy’s name?” he asked, his voice now soothing and soft, as if trying to tempt the answer he wanted with candy.   
“Esmenarda I think, master.”   
“She gave me something a while ago. Don’t let the captain put thoughts in your head, his mind is in the gutter so much it’s a wonder it doesn’t wash away in the rain. Now pay attention, I’m going only going to teach you this once and you are to live by these rules, understand me?”   
“Yes, sir.” 

 

As Claude lectured her long into the night on etiquette and acting like a young gentleman, his mind began to wonder about the talisman Esmeralda had left him and what to do with it. He had tied it to a cross and thrown in behind a bookshelf. So far no dead rats had shown up, but he didn’t want to touch it just yet. He was still constantly distracted by her in thought and most of the times he went out walking, he found himself following her tambourine music or standing still and trying hard to resist it. In his boredom he began to contemplate exactly what was wrong with him, for though he found himself constantly haunted by thoughts he paid for in hard prayer, he found that all he truly wanted from seeing her in his head so often was a kiss, a tiny chaste kiss, a desire that if not for her origin would have been a perfectly acceptable to wish for.   
The fact that the spell didn’t quite seem to be making up its mind no matter how he put it kept him from making up his. He wondered if it was a bad luck talisman, for he had been injured the same day. If that was so, strangely his bad luck had taken a wrong turn somewhere. As much as he had been repulsed by the thought of keeping Gaetan, his luck had improved once she arrived. She had taken over so many cumbersome chores and even the gypsy riots had died down soon after she showed up.No, Gaetan seemed to be a third wheel in the equation, although sometimes the equation fell apart altogether, given the gypsy girl seemed clueless about why he was watching her and couldn’t even keep track of her goat.This meant he had to decide on what do with the thing. Maybe it wasn’t a cursed object, maybe it was just a trick to lure him into a trap. What would happen if he sent his apprentice to return the thing instead?No, he wouldn’t give it back at all. If the whole point was to return it, he was keeping it and pretending he never got the message. Whatever the gypsies were up to, he wasn’t falling for it until he had something that guaranteed it wasn’t something sinister.   
…………….   
Sinister or not, Esmeralda had long ago forgotten about her scarf and her words earlier had been nothing more than coincidence.   
“What?” Esmeralda yelled over Prince’s wails.   
“I said—let go of my hair!” Clopin tried to yell over the baby. “Five seconds, that’s all I ask!”   
“What?” she yelled again.   
“Not you—fine, you can have my hair, will that shut you up?” Clopin stopped his futile struggle with Prince and sat down, setting the baby on his lap. Maybe if he waited a few more hours, the baby would give up. At the moment, the baby had a lock of his hair in each of its tiny fists and was still wailing louder than anything Clopin had ever heard.   
Esmeralda tried to distract the baby with Djali, who shot out of her hands and hid.   
Clopin sighed, bowing his head. He wondered if he was dreaming because the baby suddenly went quiet and let go of his hair. Instead, the baby had knocked his hat off his head and stuck as much as he could in his mouth. “All that noise because you wanted to eat my hat?”   
“Is that safe?” Esmeralda asked.   
“I don’t think I care,” Clopin said, rubbing his aching scalp. “I was trying to ask how things were going for you.”   
“Slower than I was hoping,” Esmeralda said. Her disappointment wasn’t improving as she noticed Prince staring at her chest and drooling. Well, maybe she could share hair tips with Malarrimo if her plan got her anywhere.   
“No ravens yet, I take it,” Clopin said, this time rubbing his eyes and taking the feather away from Prince before he tried to eat that too.   
“It flew away,” Esmeralda said.   
“I thought it wasn’t a bird yet.”   
“Well, it ran away.”   
“You don’t need any help, do you?”   
“I don’t want to think about that,” she said. Truthfully, Frollo didn’t seem to know what of hers to stare at at the festival and at that time she had thought it was funny. If he was in the closet too, he was doing a good job at hiding in there.   
“Well, you’ll have to, because I can’t think about anything at the moment,” Clopin said. “I haven’t slept in three days and I’ve barely eaten in two. Esmeralda, could you—“   
“Oh no!” she said. “I may be your friend, but I do not babysit.”   
“I was going to say your goat was about to eat one of Prince’s toys, but it’s too late now.”   
“Djali!” Esmeralda scolded, sending the goat back into hiding. “You can’t take the baby to work with you?”   
“With this noise? Frollo’d throw him in the orphanage and me in his Palace of Justice.”   
“Can’t you ask someone to babysit?”   
“Wouldn’t look good to other people.”   
“Maybe just until you can find someone to teach you how to keep him quiet.”   
“If I can find someone,” Clopin said.   
“It’s going to look worse to people if you get yourself killed over this kid.”   
“I guess you’re right,” Clopin said, then sighed. He seemed to be doing that a lot lately. “Do things look different to you around here?”   
“I’ve seen a few people rearranging things,” she said. “And some families moved in with relatives, but they said it was a personal stuff.”   
“Well, tell me if you hear about anything weird—weirder.”   
“Weirder than the fact that I’m very worried little Mal’s living with an old man who’s never been around a woman for more than a minute?”   
“So?”   
“So he’s a bit… fashion conscious.”   
“Well, he should be!” Clopin exclaimed. “I wouldn’t want to think of him without clothes.”   
“That’s not what I meant… I mean, this is a big city and… “   
“Esmeralda, stop right there. I’ve already heard more than I can take of limericks about that man and that boy. Don’t give people ideas, especially dumb ones like those. There’s too much that doesn’t make sense with any of that.” Clopin took his hat away from Prince, who started screaming again. “I really do need sleep, I’m starting to stand up for that nasty sod. Well, the past few weeks have been rather horse-free, so I guess this is the worst that’s going to happen.”


	11. Chapter 11

“Sir!” Phoebus yelled, throwing the door to Frollo’s house open.

Claude was sitting in a chair and the towel he held to his wet hair slowly fell from his fingertips as he stopped at the sight of the captain. Fortunately for Phoebus, the man was for once too shocked to say anything.

“I need you!” Phoebus said. “Not like—I need one of you! Now!”

“Take him, not me,” Claude said, through gritted teeth. It had been quiet on the streets until now. It was a suspicious quiet, but he could tolerate suspicious. Not even the haunting dreams of the gypsy woman could hold back his longing for climbing onto the back of his horse and charging through the night, purging it of those who had dared upset the peace in his city. A good protector rode out to battle to fight enemies, not just preparing papers to stop intangible ones. He turned away from Phoebus. He was nearly tempted to ban the use of hammers throughout the city for this.

“But—“

“Exactly what use would I be?” Claude argued. “Besides, I’d risk getting killed too.”

“I meant she’s in the washroom,” Phoebus said quietly. 

“Then wait,” Claude said, ending the conversation like a giant door slamming shut.

Phoebus said nothing and wondered if there was a corner he could back into. Thankfully, Gaetan opened the door to the washroom a few seconds later and Phoebus grabbed her wrist and ran out the door, shutting it loudly.

“Did I miss something?” Claude asked himself, turning to the door. He was taken out of his angry moping when he realized Phoebus had just had a conversation with him without actually saying anything stupid.

………………

“I’m only telling you this because I’d tell him this if it weren’t for the fact that he could scare the plague: be careful,” Phoebus said, still running and dragging Gaetan to the barracks. 

“What’s happening?” she asked.

“Two people have been murdered and we can’t find the guy! He ran off with a kid!” Phoebus yelled frantically. “I don’t know what to do! I’m a solider. It was pretty easy to find the bad guys where I came from. I need someone smart to tell me how to find him—wait, did I just say I was stupid?”

“No.”

“Good, come on.”

Phoebus didn’t let go of Gaetan’s arm until they reached the tiny pool of torchlight near the stables. After they were both on horseback, Phoebus told her to stay close, but his only reason was ‘because.’

This time the uncomfortable silence had nothing to do with either of them. It was out of convenience and mourning that no words passed between them. Gaetan spent her time leading Phoebus through dark alleys she had been told never to go near as a girl and trying to predict the criminal’s movements, which was most of what the late-night lectures had been about until Claude had decided she needed to learn etiquette. She had been taught how to hunt down and catch criminals with different motivations; however, she had no idea which on this particular criminal had. 

From what little she spoke to Phoebus about, the murder had been all about the child. Nothing had been stolen, and barely anything had even been disturbed in the house. Why would anyone want to steal a child in this fashion? The most likely reason was for a hostage, collateral to drive people like her away if they were caught. But it still made no sense. It all seemed too planned out. Why take a hostage and then be too hard to find in the first place? 

She had been vulnerable all her life. She had only temporarily forgotten what it was like to wonder if she was going to die that night. The familiar feeling called up not cowardice or even a thought to flee, but a question: what did Frollo feel after so many decades of this?

……….

Gaetan jerked her horse to a halt suddenly as she realized she was alone in the dark. Phoebus hadn’t followed her down this alley. She tore her dagger out of its sheath and studied her options. She could turn around and look for him, but there was no knowing where they separated or where he went when he started looking for her. She could chase him all over the city in the dark, or she could keep going and find someone eventually, him, the soldiers, someone wandering the streets—

A hand grabbed her hair and tore her off her horse. There was nothing to see in the dark, but she could feel a hot breath on her face.

Panicking, she thrust her dagger at her attacker, only guessing at where to strike. The dagger lodged on something, then easily slid through something else that was softer. She had hit bone and then found flesh before her attacked threw her into the wall across the alley.

She heard the horse make its closest attempt at a scream and then run away down the alley. It’d be a miracle if she were so lucky. 

She looked up from her crumpled position on the pavement. She wanted to scream, but all she could manage to do was cough as an indistinct shape approached her. She could see movement, and occasionally an outline of black on blacker. Silently, a patch of moonlight caught on her dagger, stuck in him somewhere, accompanied by a large gleam of a cutlass coming down after her head.

Closing her eyes and doing her best to roll out of the way, she heard a loud, wet thump followed by someone choking and then footsteps.

Despite her aching head and the subsequent sparks of red flashing before her eyes, she tried to stand. A hand took hers and pulled her to her feet. “How many fingers am I holding up?” Phoebus yelled.  
“It’s too dark to see.”

“You’re fine.”

Gaetan put her hand over her eyes as someone brought a torch over. A large man, a peasant, was on the ground, holding his neck and having trouble breathing. Something liquid shone all over him and spilled out on the street. Her dagger must have pierced his jugular notch. When Phoebus hit him, it must have jostled the blade. 

“He’s bleeding,” Gaetan barely managed. That was all she could say about a strange man who had tried to kill her.

“He said take him to Jacques,” Phoebus ordered to the soldiers. He waited until the soldiers, including the man with the torch, had left. “Sorry. It’s just that this way he might have a chance to survive to go to jail.”

Gaetan nodded in the dark, hoping Phoebus felt it with his hand still on her. As her vision began clearing, more parts of her began to protest her new job, especially her shoulder, which she brushed his hand off of to rub it.

He grabbed her other shoulder to lead her through the dark city. She didn’t protest. She had lost him once tonight and it nearly cost her her life. Maybe when Frollo explained how not to get killed in the dark she could go off on her own again. “The kid’s dead,” Phoebus said. That was all there was to it. There wasn’t much else to add anyway. “You hurt?”

“I’ll walk it off,” she said. Phoebus didn’t ask how she’d walk off a shoulder injury. He didn’t say anything. He’d have enough trouble finding her horse again.

They joined the rest of the soldiers just before the door to the hospice opened. 

Jacques stood in the doorway, holding a candle. He didn’t look at the man the soldiers shoved forward for very long. He just shook his head and closed the door on all of them. The man was dead. 

Gaetan didn’t quite understand what it all meant. She knew death; she’d been constantly reminded of how her misery came from her mother’s failed attempt at drowning her, yet had been still afraid of threats of trying again; executions were public and they were one of the few entertainments she was allowed, given that the crowds often bought random trinkets. 

Supposedly, she was meant to feel something about the man, but all she felt was tired. Tomorrow was Sunday and she wondered if God would be offended if she slept through the sermon just this once. To her, people were people and the man’s features were lit up red and black just like everyone else’s. She didn’t understand. She had not just killed a murderer tonight. She had killed a gypsy.

………………..

Frollo and Phoebus had more of a loud discussion than an argument; lack ofsleep, memories of previous encounters, and frustration had worn both men down by now.

Frollo won everything. The first thing he won was that Gaetan was dismissed from the whole thing and sent to bed, although Phoebus disapproved of the older man’s cajoling and obvious pride. He demanded Phoebus give her a sword, she might manage to stay on the horse with one and she’d be better armed. He had already won the argument of if someone was going to risk their life, it was better to send someone with two good legs. Phoebus was thrown out of the house around dawn after being reminded of the fact that not only had he been Gaetan’s height and age and survived battle, but so had Frollo…well, not height. 

Claude soon went to his bedroom to rouse her, only to find her already up, trying to fend off sleep as she finished dressing. She tried to apologize for waking up late and cringed as he brought his hand to her, but all he did was pat her wild hair and say she was excused this time and that she’d ‘get used to it,’ before he sent her off to church.

‘Good dog, go play’ he thought. 

This was easier than handing out treats.

…………………

The gypsies were having enough of dogs. Some cur had gone after little Malarrimo. He might not see it as a personal attack, at least not yet, but his master undoubtedly did and would immediately teach the boy even more gypsy-hate due to this. Some mongrel had not just lost his own life, but threatened all of theirs, regardless of their alliance. 

Everyone stayed below street level for days after the event, hiding in their homes or other places away from the laws of either Paris or the court. Frollo was pacing the city, hunting for clues. Days later he decided it was indeed an isolated incident and exactly what the gypsies had been planning all these weeks.

What was more irritating was that Clopin was sniffing about as well on this incident and he actually refused to give up after Frollo had. The loyals didn’t want to rat out the dissenters and the dissenters refused to reveal themselves in a time of defeat, but were too proud to point fingers at anyone but the King himself over their troubles. It was a month later that Clopin stopped trying to dig around about the incident, and only after he found something he considered more important.

Little Malarrimo had made his mark on everyone. The little puppy was already trained for a dogfight. It was best to leave these French ferals to themselves, no matter what one thought of them.  
Everyone was wary of Esmeralda the ‘she-dog.’ She was trying to lure wolves from their den and no one wanted to be around to get bitten with her. 

There were too many dogs waiting for someone to throw them a bone and it was too dangerous to do so for any of them. If only there was a pound to put them in.

……………….

“Why can’t churches have basements instead?” Gaetan muttered, finally reaching the top of the steps.

Her feet barely had a chance to set themselves on the balcony, before they and the rest of her were swept up by Quasimodo as he grabbed her and spun her in a hug.

“You’re back!—and a lot lighter than I thought you were.” He set Gaetan back on her feet as lightly as possible.

There was no real point doing so, for her sense of balance was still going for a ride and she fell backwards, barely managing not to land on the basket.

“I’m fine,” she said, hoping the words didn’t indicate she wanted to go for another ride.

“And you look like Frollo,” Quasimodo said, helping her up.

“He said that wasn’t his fault,” she replied. She didn’t want to talk today. Last night hadn’t so much disturbed her as the ubiquitous thinking she was only five and everything was too big or too high and she was too young and too small. Even Frollo had mentioned that she needed to grow a bit more before he could teach her half of the rest of the martial arts he’d learned. 

“A lot like him,” Quasimodo said, pointing at the bloodstains on her clothes. His words had a heaviness to them that she was dreading.

Only now did Gaetan realize she had thrown on her clothes from the night before in her drowsiness. No wonder no one tried to wake her as she slept through mass. Maybe if she told him politely that she was right she could preemptively win the argument and be done with it. “I told you before; I do his job… now that he’s not training me anymore.”

“But you caught him, right?”

“Caught who?”

“You arrested someone, right?”

“Well, I found him…” she said. Technically, he found her. “But he didn’t last very long.”

“That happens to Master Frollo sometimes,” Quasimodo said cheerfully. “I’d love to hear about it. It must be like Deborah riding off into battle, or Yael when she defeated Siserah. I’m sorry, you probably want to change, first.”

She had only heard bits and pieces of the stories of those women, but she knew there were bits missing from the story, or at least there were bits nothing like what she had experienced.

“I don’t think I’m that good,” she said, following him.

“Master will teach you,” he said. Quasimodo had worried about his father in his absence before, but he had given up on worrying about anything truly serious for years. His father had survived injuries, sickness, and even a poor attempt at poison once. He could be damaged to an extent, but nothing fatal could ever befall him in Quasimodo’s head. Not only that, but Frollo had tended to a few of Quasimodo’s wounds from toppling off parts of the church, and had left supplies and medicine when Quasimodo had taken ill. “Nothing can happen to you with him around.” What he was truly happy about, was the fact that she’d tell him stories about her daring adventures. Frollo hardly ever told him much about his daring feats in chasing criminals and he was a very bad storyteller as well.

……………….

 

Far off in the shadows, the two were being watched. They were being commented on as well.

“Yeah, change into something not like him would be my preference,” Laverne muttered.

“Oh, come now,” Victor said. “I hardly think a bit of dress up and the same job puts her in the same caliber as Frollo.”

“Hey, let’s not judge right yet,” Hugo said.

The others both backed away slightly and raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t like Hugo to come up with sane ideas.

“This is only her second week. She could be just like him once a month!”

“No goldfish can be more annoying than you, Hugo,” Laverne said, smacking him on the head. “He should get one to replace you with.”

……………..

Time, as it tends to, sped by. Time has a schedule, and it likes to laugh at those who miss it, because you’ve been warned far in advance.

All Phoebus was concerned about missing was lunch. When he had solved that problem and was about to return to duty, he wandered right into Time and Fate’s previously scheduled disaster. Frollo was once again walking his horse and had nearly walked it right into the captain. “Sir, I—Gaetan said—“

“If you’re following orders, I really don’t care,” Claude said. “But I did want to talk to you about him. Was he injured recently?”

“Injured?” Phoebus asked cluelesly. “No, why?”

“Seems Gaetan has been in pain a bit. And said ‘he’ was bleeding. Won’t tell me a thing about it. I told him to take it like a man, but I was wondering if you knew anything.”

“Oh boy…” was all Phoebus could manage. “I’m…I’m gonna go over this way, or whatever way you’re not going and—“

“Captain Pheobus, first you think I’m senile, and now you think I’m five,” Claude said.

Phoebus was terrified at the thought that Frollo might be trying not to laugh at something. “I don’t understand…” Phoebus said timidly. He didn’t want to understand.

“Exactly,” Claude said. “If you ever smarten up, your first lesson should be that I am your superior and elder and that I will utterly ruin your day if you go around getting stupid ideas ever again.”

“So you’re just playing with me?”

“Phoebus, what person doesn’t get that talk from—when exactly did you leave for the war?”

“I was nine, sir.”

“Oh, well in that case, you should go ask Gaetan to fill you in on some details and correct a few things the officers told you.”

“I will be so happy when you can ride that horse again, sir.”

“Well, this should teach you to show up on time,” Claude said, crossing his arms and looking sternly at the captain. He didn’t want it to show, but playing with the man’s empty head was quite amusing sometimes.

“Can’t I just go to jail instead?”

“Oh, but you wouldn’t learn anything,” Claude chided.

‘Great’ Phoebus thought. ‘Now he’s talking to me like I’m a little kid.’ “I learned to keep my mouth shut.”

“Good, that’s lesson number one.”

“And the other lessons, sir?”

“Oh, I’ll leave you to try and figure those out yourself. I can’t do everything for you,” Claude said. 

Phoebus was sure ‘stay the Hell out of Paris’ was the major lesson.

Claude waved Phoebus away and continued down the road.

…Or maybe the lesson was just to stay the Hell away from him.


	12. Chapter 12

Claude had been annoying Phoebus in early February and now it was late February and he had yet to come up with a way to annoy the captain further. He was beginning to be bothered that the gypsy’s spell had turned his head nearly as vacuous as the captain’s and then was almost furious as he realized where he was going. 

He was standing at the edge of a crowd that had gathered around all-too familiar tambourine music. He turned to stalk away, when the music suddenly stopped and there was a feminine scream accompanied by the tambourine seemingly having a seizure. Then the goat shrieked.

The crowd gasped and everyone backed away and Claude had to fight to keep from people stepping on his foot before battling through the crowd.

After shoving people away and stabbing several in the gut or the foot with his crutches, Claude finally found out what was happening. Esmeralda was trying to beat a large, angry, and probably drunk, man away with her tambourine. He held onto her arm tightly just below the shoulder. The goat tried to fight back on his mistress’s behalf, only to shriek as it was punted away—apparently again.

The minister didn’t know what to do. He had no idea how to deal with a hostage situation. By the time he ever got to one, the criminal panicked and let the hostage or had already killed them. Even if he did know what to do, he realized, he couldn’t do it anyway. He was still on crutches and he had yet to get to his horse, which might have done some damage or at least created a distraction. No one was going to listen to him while he was stuck on two sticks.

For the first time in his life, Claude found himself a spectator at a crime. Or maybe this would be an execution, given the man’s sword and how her struggles were angering him. He hadn’t been a spectator at one of those for decades either.

However, he’d never been a spectator to whatever was happening next. A large rock flew over the heads of several participants of the crowd and hit the man in the back of the head. Soon another rock flew at him from another direction and for a second he released Esmeralda.

Instead of running, she used the newfound freedom to pull out a dagger attached to her ankle. It turned out to be a smarter move than running for he grabbed her wrist and lunged to strike at her with his sword.

She slashed at the man’s wrist, just above the hand that held her. He pulled back, screaming. She turned to run this time, but she was too late to escape on her own.

Someone grabbed her and threw her out of the way as the sword came down. Claude missed the rest of the fight, for Esmeralda was thrown in his direction and the only thing to stop her from hitting the street was him. 

She stood up, standing on his feet, and screamed something as she watched. Doing his best to shuffle his feet out from under her while still encumbered by the brace, Claude assumed that what she was yelling meant ‘puppy’ for that was what everyone else was yelling. The question of why was a confounding mystery he would see if he could figure out later.

“You’re in my way!” he yelled. No one did anything. As much as her backside looked nice, he didn’t want to see it, especially while trying to stand up. “Excuse me!” he tried again, finally but barely shoving himself up on the crutches. 

The crowd gasped and Esmeralda blocked his view as he focused on balancing before standing at full height. “What’s—hey!” Esmeralda grabbed the closest piece of cloth, which happened to be his dalmatian sleeve, and started to cry on it. “I am not a handkerchief!” he yelled, tearing his sleeve from her grasp and righting himself to his proper height of half a foot taller than her.

Pushing her away, he caught sight of the last of the fight, realizing he’d missed the climax of battle and resenting the gyspy because her pathetic sobs had been pointless. Esmeralda’s rescuer had turned out to be Gaetan, and the man had sublimated killing the ‘boy’ in Esmeralda’s place. Gaetan had been shorter than the man realized and he’s missed both in timing and in height in his attack, thanks to her training. Gaetan, however, misjudged the man’s weight and struggled to keep her footing and to shove his dead weight off. 

One of Gaetan’s feet slid out from under her and she fell to her knee, as she used her other leg to slowly shove the body to the side. She picked herself up and tore her short sword from the body.  
“Miss, are you—“ Gaetan asked as she turned to Esmeralda, then stopped, realizing not just what, but who she was. Then she noticed her master behind the gypsy and swore as she tried to run.

Now that Esmeralda wasn’t in his way, Claude could easily maneuver on his crutches. He easily reached out and grabbed her arm. “What have I told you about that language?” he yelled. “Perhaps you’d like to practice your dodging skills—“

“Oh, is this your child?” Esmeralda interrupted, putting her hands on both their wrists.  
“Unhand both of us!” Claude demanded. “And go away. Gaetan, you’re getting cleaned up.” He started leading her to the nearest well, which was blocks away.

“You’re daddy must be so proud!” Esmeralda said, petting Gaetan’s hair. She stared at her now blood covered hand, and then shrugged. She licked her hand and tried to smooth Gaetan’s hair back into place before the blood dried.

“Daddy?” both ‘men’ asked. 

“You’re not his father?” Esmeralda asked.

“No, I am not,” Claude said. “I have not even been married—I see you people don’t follow that line of logic. Why are you following me?”

“I was wondering if I could thank your little boy for saving me,” she said, walking closer to them. “Who’s boy is he?”

“His father died in the war,” Claude said. “His mother needed the money, and I needed an apprentice, simple as that.” There, a much more respectable backstory than being a bastard child of some whore. He wasn’t lying; he just kept a few details to himself. Even he didn’t have as much breeding and refinery as he wanted if you looked at the truth straight on. His father was just a working class peasant and his mother was considered a spinster when she married.

“That’s so nice of you,” Esmeralda said. 

“No, it’s not,” he replied flatly. “Why are you still here?” He contemplated sending her to Phoebus. Between the both of them, they had enough stupidity and insanity to fill an insane asylum. But the captain had enough flaws without chatting up a gypsy witch.

“You’ve never been married?” she asked, changing the subject. “Then I hope this isn’t too forward, but I must say I’ve admired you for some time now.” Esmeralda wondered why it was so easy to get his attention without talking to him, but when she did talk, he didn’t like her. Too bad hitting him over the head with a blunt object and dragging him off somewhere private didn’t count as flirting. 

“That’s very… interesting” he said, finally stopping at the well. “Except, not really.” He thought he couldn’t be more confused when he thought of her last night, but now she had corrected him. She was pretty, entertaining to watch for some reason, and so far didn’t break the law, but he preferred her when she wasn’t talking.

“I mean, I know this is hardly a befitting situation, and I do hope you’ll excuse my ignorance, but… oh, if only I knew the grace and poise that suited someone like you!”

“Um…” Claude said. Talking to Phoebus on one of his worse days made more sense than this.  
Gaetan did her best to pretend nothing was happening and just washed her face with water from the well’s bucket.

“It would be a dream to be wooed as a proper woman,” she said, clasping her hands and leaning against him slightly.

“What part of don’t touch me did you not get the first time?” he asked. In truth, he was stalling for time. He knew what all the words meant, but strung together like this and in this context, she might as well have been speaking whatever native language her people spoke. “Did the archdeacon send you?”

“Huh?” she asked.

“Young woman, I honestly have no idea what you’re saying.” He hoped in whatever code she was speaking in, it meant ‘Go away,’ or at least ‘Make sense.’

Before she could try and explain, Djali butted her legs and jerked its head at something. Casting a quick glance in that direction, she saw Clopin waving at her from an alleyway.

“Oh, how decorous of you to say such things,” she said. “I shan’t trouble you any longer. But I do hope to see you again!” She ran off down the alley, Djali tagging along.

“What was that all about?” Claude asked himself, then turned to Gaetan. 

“She likes you, master,” Gaetan said, suddenly feeling pressed for answers.

“I don’t see why,” he said. People weren’t supposed to like him. It ruined the whole point of torturing someone if they smiled back at you.

“Romantically,” Gaetan said. As intelligent as Frollo was, Phoebus was smarter about this, and she was sure that his horse could outwit him at a few things.

“Oh.” There was a very long pause as she finished washing up. “Wait, what?”

………………

“This is your plan?” Clopin whispered, wanting to scream.  
“You said you trusted me,” Esmeralda complained, hands on her hips.  
“I do trust you. It’s him I don’t trust!” Clopin whispered, waving his arm out at the streets.  
“He hasn’t done anything,” she said, now crossing her arms.   
“Good. Let’s keep it that way.”  
“Look, he’s a bit stupider than I thought about this, but I’m sure this plan will work,” she said. She hoped to God and All Other Holy Things that she was right and that Frollo had shown up to stare at her and not at Djali. “He’s just a lot harder than he looks—forget I said that.”  
“I’m making forgetting that a priority,” Clopin said. “It’s up there with breathing.”  
“He’s not as easy as I thought.”  
“Esmeralda, I know corpses easier than him. In fact he might as well be one given that’s all he’s intent on making more of! Why don’t you just go play on something metal during a thunderstorm? It’s a lot safer and you’re a lot more likely to get off while doing it.”  
“Clopin, that’s not my plan,” she said. Why did everyone think she was speaking an alien language all of the sudden?  
“Oh, I get it” Clopin said, suddenly elated. “You’re going to kill him. Go right ahead, I’ve been trying to kill him for years. It’s the kid I have a problem with.”  
“Clopin, that’s not my plan either,” she said. “Although I will if I need to… Look, you will know the second I’m in trouble. But not yet.”  
“Fine. Just don’t do anything I wouldn’t—no, that’s not right,” Clopin put his hand on his face and tried to think.   
“Clopin, look at it this way: he’s not going to send my breasts to jail anytime soon and if he’s paying attention to them, he’s not paying attention to anything else.”  
“I’m not sure if you’re flattering yourself or if you’re amazingly brilliant.”  
“Well, he’s not when it comes to this and I’m wondering how to give him a hint without painting words and arrows on my blouse,” she said, rolling her eyes. She’d been harassed by more straightforward twelve-year olds than Frollo.  
“Yes, that would be a problem,” Clopin said, thoughtfully contemplating her cleavage. “Even if you did find someone who could read and write, it might be a bit too subtle.”

……………….

Later that night, Claude sat thinking in his chair, obviously wishing he could pace back and forth across the floor without the aid of his crutches. Gaetan felt she would be safer from whatever he was contemplating in her corner, but the floor needed scrubbing again and in the winter the fireplace was used often and needed sweeping.   
“What does that woman want?” Claude asked aloud.   
“Flowers, master.”  
She saw his eyes focus on her and she cringed. Either the question was rhetorical or she had given him the wrong answer.  
“In February?” Claude asked. “It’s still snowing.”  
Gaetan didn’t answer this time.   
“Wait, you’re a female,” he said, as if he’d suddenly gotten a bright idea.  
Gaetan hoped that was rhetorical too.  
Claude had taken to calling her ‘boy’ even when no one else was present. To his mind, she was male. Flat chest, no hips, spoke perfectly coherently, had nothing to do with flowers, and wore pants; that equaled male in his mind. “You can translate her alien blathering. The question is what do I do with her?”  
Gaetan decided this was going to be a one-man conversation, whether Claude liked it or not.  
The problem with that was that Claude didn’t like it at all. He’d never liked this. His father’s only advice had been ‘If she’s serious about you, do whatever she wants, even if it’s stupid. That’s how I married your mother.’ Why had been about money, so that was even less help. Eventually his father lowered his standards and just said ‘Just make sure you bring home something human.’  
His mother had been a lot more proactive in trying to see the family line continue in genetics. He had once made the mistake of asking why they didn’t have more children themselves if they wanted to see grandkids. That was his first mistake and he had the misfortune to keep making them until his mother gave up on him entirely and thought he was a hopeless failure. She gave him the book De Amore, which he wondered why it was even written: nothing but delusional people having conversations with women who weren’t interested and men looking for some non-existent clue to spurn on their attempts at love and then several paragraphs about talking with prostitutes and raping nuns. His mother had said the book was romantic, but he was terrified to be near her until they had a very long conversation about it, which ended in her telling him to ignore the book. After that, she sent him off to public gatherings and meetings with other lower aristocrats. He had always been dragged back from them by the ear and scolded, not having done something she thought was obvious. Her tirades went from yelling at him to talk to girls more and not to tell them it was all his mother’s idea to why didn’t he sneak off with them when invited and then not knowing what to do when he did. She stopped taking him anywhere after that and made one last attempt in the form of sending letters about a betrothal, all of which started with an apology about him. She gave up after that. She gave up on a lot of things after that. His only response had come after her death and he had to personally make a rejection letter, saying he was in mourning and he never wrote the mystery girl again.   
His main problem, which his mother never understood, was that he didn’t like a lot of people. If they were intelligent enough that he could stand to be around them, they often bored him. Women talked of knitting and pretty ponies and colors, never anything he could talk about. He preferred intellectual conversation, he was raised with refinement and breeding, he was well-read and modest. Esmeralda fit into those categories like a square peg in a round hole.  
“How old are you, ten?”  
That one wasn’t rhetorical, Gaetan realized. For some reason, her instincts were telling her to run away. “What day is it today?”  
“The twenty-fourth, why?” he asked.  
“Fourteen, then.”  
Not noticing any significant change in her age, Claude continued. He didn’t mention it, but he was perplexed by her acting a bit more morose than usual for the next few days. “Even better. You were a girl, and a peasant, you tell me how to go about courting her.”  
“But she’s a gypsy, master.” Hopefully that would make him go on about how horrible those people were and give up on his current idea.  
“I know. That’s the point,” he said.  
From her expression, she apparently didn’t get it.  
“If she weren’t I’d take her to the church and have someone throw holy water on her for speaking in tongues!” he exclaimed, as if he’d found out how to turn lead into gold. “But this is an opportunity! The secrets she can tell me! I’ll have her Court of Miracles! I’ll know what the gypsies are up to, when they’re going to act, how they operate! All I need to do is court her for a while and she’ll tell me what I need to know. I just need you to tell me how. What could possibly go wrong?”  
“Can’t I just go to jail?”

………..

What could go wrong, did. Gaetan’s first trouble was to figure out what exactly Frollo didn’t understand. Sadly, the answer to that was everything. Courting was like a foreign language to him, and he’d already bungled Italian and German.  
Frollo liked books and thought of people in a similar fashion. The cover didn’t matter, but some people could certainly fix theirs up a bit. The inside just tended to be dull and tedious most of the time. Gaetan was a novel he’d found in the sewer: air it out properly, replace the cover, and give a spine and it was nearly decent. He’d slowly replace the pages with those of better quality, but the writing was rather interesting and pleasing. Phoebus had a nice cover and there were scribbled notes in the margins and most of the pages were blank, hopefully to be filled in later. Esmeralda, however, wasn’t a very good book. All the words were right and had a loopy frilly quality to them, but strung together in sentences, they just draped gibberish across the pages and if you looked at the cover the wrong way, you got a very lewd image.  
Gaetan’s second problem was that her mother had never passed on any knowledge of romance to her. ‘Make sure you smile at the men,’ turned into her throwing rocks at mean ones and bullying younger ones. She never realized that it might make her unapproachable or be seen as a rejection. To her knowledge she had no suitors, but then, she was never taught how to spot one either. Often her mother would complain, completely oblivious to her daughter preferring to hit things than be hit on, ‘Why aren’t you married yet?’  
Gaetan had to remember what she’d seen on the streets and heard from her mother and then had to filter a few bits out. After that, it was breaking every tiny piece down to its simplest parts for him to understand. By the time she understood how to talk to Frollo, she had concluded all men were morons.  
“It starts with giving girls flowers,” she said. That seemed like a simple enough sentence.  
Seemed.  
“Why?” he asked.   
“Because… um… because they say they want flowers,” One sentence in and she had hit an academic wall. Why was teaching being a man so easy to a girl, but teaching girls to a man so difficult? “I don’t know; I don’t like flowers.”  
“But flowers are things you shove in your mattress to keep bugs away,” Claude protested.  
“Not those flowers,” Gaetan said. “Bunches of flowers. Bouquets.”  
Claude took a while to ponder that. Jacques used flowers in medicine and to stuff his beaked mask when a patient came in with an infectious disease. Why would healthy women want them? “What do they do with them?”  
“Uh…Good question,” Gaetan conceded. “But they’re important for some reason. It’s like etiquette. It makes you different from Phoebus.”  
“Point taken,” Claude said. “But why can’t she get her own?”  
“Because that’s not how it works… for some reason.”  
“What if it’s winter?”  
“You…write her letters or come back and tell her a big long speech about how much you missed her.” She’d seen a lot of men get thrown out of houses over stuff like that. She kept an eye out for them in the spring. She knew how to look for them because she made a good amount of money—relatively—selling ribbons to men trying to woo young girls, only to sell the ribbons back to them the next day after the women had tossed them away.  
“Well, she can’t read,” Claude said. “I think I’ll politely wait until the flowers come up. It’s only a little over a month. She can wait that long, trust me.” He’d been finding himself wandering into her for a month. If she could put up with that, she could wait. “Is that it?”  
“Um…. Girls like dinner,” Gaetan said, trying to think. Her mother certainly talked about how her father bought her dinner a lot and how sweet it was. She talked about how some new guy tried to buy her dinner as best he could when he had no money, which was somehow sweeter. Gaetan didn’t understand that logic.  
“They can cook, can’t they?” Claude asked.  
Gaetan almost felt offended, and then almost felt sorry for him. He wasn’t asking a mean question because he was mean. He was asking a stupid question because he was stupid. “No, they like it when they don’t have to cook.”  
“But I feed you!” he said.  
“That doesn’t count,” Gaetan said. “It only counts if flowers or a long speech about missing someone happens first.”  
“Women make no sense. Don’t ever become one.”  
“I don’t think I want to,” she said. She also questioned the alternative, given the rampant stupidity.

…………………….

Men weren’t just stupid, they took a dumb idea and ran with it like a dog playing with a ball and refusing to give it back. Frollo had asked her to consider the situation with Esmeralda and look for both danger and any details she had forgotten to mention about ‘handling women.’  
The rest of Paris had been smart enough to avoid anyone in charge of the law in a grumpy mood, especially if they were capable of killing, even if they were a tiny little kid. She was standing in for Frollo, and so was her mood.  
Phoebus, however, wasn’t learning much, no matter how hard the lessons. “You’re in a foul mood,” he said. He hoped to cheer her up from whatever Frollo had dumped on her.  
“He wants to know about women,” Gaetan said mournfully.  
“Wow.” Conversations usually took at least five seconds to blow up in his face, and often someone waited for him to put his foot in his mouth.  
“Not me!”  
“Tell me these things before hand!” Phoebus yelled. “And he says I can’t talk right. Wait, what about that girl who left something of hers at his place?”  
“That’s who he’s interested in.”  
“Poor guy,” Phoebus mused. “Happens to lots of men with girls like her. You think all that stuff she says to you is true. I wonder what her rates are, though…”  
Gaetan shot him a spiteful glance.  
“What?” Phoebus asked innocently. “If he really wants her in the long run, he can have her. But if that’s her job, there’s nothing really wrong with me at least asking.”  
“My mother was a prostitute,” Gaetan said, and steered her horse away.  
“Yeah but—Oh sweet Jesus! I’m sorry! Get back here! I said I was sorry! Hey!”


	13. Chapter 13

February left quietly and March tramped slush and mud into houses. April poked its head in and wondered b everyone was in such a bad mood. To make up for it, it decided to help out during a party. The sun shone brightly and unhindered in the sky, polished to an extra blueness in the morning and the month did its best to be warm as well. And that was the day before the party, as the month got ready to do its best. At first it all seemed so perfect. Moods began to spring up and so did flowers. Claude was off his crutches and slowly acclimating to his horse again. He spent his short rides taking his job back and sending Gaetan to do more chores or patrol somewhere else in the city. Phoebus was actually glad Frollo was back, because now the man was reticent as ever. Clopin was in a better mood with the upcoming festival and cheerfully ignorant that now that Giselle had given birth she could return to her more profitable occupation and she was happier for the money.  
However, moods began to sour just before the festival. Clopin wondered what Giselle would think. He hadn’t brought her any money since January and he had other people taking care of their baby. Giselle wondered if he’d be just like the last man she suffered nine months for just to lose the child before. Frollo was worried that now that flowers were around, he’d have to try to sort out more of Esmeralda’s tangled web of words and he wondered if it was worth it and why she was still in his head. Phoebus realized that Esmeralda and Claude were not as ‘close’ as he thought, but was thankful he learned it without opening his big dumb mouth. He was also glad he never asked Esmeralda about her rates, but didn’t think any of this would end well. Gaetan was bored being stuck playing errand boy and had to wait for hours for Esmeralda to take a break from dancing.   
When she finally stopped and the crowds dispersed, Gaetan approached. She held her head up high and did her best to approach the woman in a dignified manner. “Miss?”  
“Oh, it’s you, little…um, what was your name again?” Esmeralda asked, bending down.  
Gaetan was sure the woman was putting her breasts in her face on purpose. “Uh, my master said these are for you,” she said, producing a bunch of flowers, tied with Esmeralda’s scarf, from behind her back.   
“Oh how sweet!” she exclaimed, taking the bouquet of weeds Gaetan had collected after Frollo had told her ‘flowers are flowers, go get them yourself.’ Esmeralda failed to notice the rosary tied around the bouquet as well.  
“Um…” Gaetan started and cringed. If this didn’t go well, she’d get the blame. “He was wondering if you’d join him tomorrow at the festival by the cathedral doors after church and…uh, he wanted to know if there were any accommodations he should make to please you.”  
“Eh?” Esmeralda asked. “Oh, uh, I just want a stroll and a simple chat. Anything else would be too scandalous.”  
“…Yeah.” Gaetan said. If this was romance, then Gaetan was marrying for money and having a lifelong headache. Or forgetting the whole thing entirely. “I’d best be going now, miss.”  
Esmeralda watched the boy leave and smiled. She looked at the flowers and chuckled. If he insisted on flowers, no wonder it took him so long to get this far. If she actually gave a damn about the man, it would be sweet.  
“Look Djali,” she said, pulling the scarf off the flowers. “Munchies!”  
………….

April was a delicate month and could not take the stress of everyone’s worry. The weather broke down and the wind picked up and the month sniffled in loneliness.   
Clopin had moved his puppet stand out of the square and no one else was concerned about finding where he hid it. A story about someone wandering past his friends and saying ‘Nope, not dead yet,’ was rather boring no matter how you put it. If you made a mistake, fine; fix it and get over it. No reason to throw a party.  
It was the only story anyone was allowed to show this day, but in his muddled mind he did have a reason to celebrate. Maybe.  
“Giselle!” he happily cried, pouncing in front of her. “For you!” he said, merrily producing a sorry bunch of stems with a few smashed and gooey flowers. “Prince kind of ate them.”  
“Prince?” she asked, hugging the piled of plants to her breasts. “You named our son Prince?”  
“I like that name,” he said, somewhat sheepishly.   
The baby noticed that they were talking about him without involving him in the conversation and started to scream.  
“He does that a lot,” Clopin said.  
“Oh, come here, Prince,” Giselle said, and took her baby from his father. She began cooing nonsense at the child, who quieted and smiled. When she spoke real words, Clopin almost didn’t catch them, or the fact that they were to him. “Well, if the priest didn’t think it was too silly a name, then he’s Prince.”  
“Uh….” he said, trying to think of a way out.  
“Our son isn’t baptized?” she yelled, while the person in question untied her stomacher and shoved the laces in his mouth.  
“Oh that,” Clopin answered, only to realize it was a bad answer. “I’m…I’m not really a fan of that. It sounds a bit too much like drowning the baby and—“  
“Why is our baby living in sin?”  
“He’s not, he’s living in a crib.” That wasn’t the right answer either.  
“What kind of life are we giving this child?” she asked, pulling the laces out of the baby’s mouth. “We’re not married; he’s not baptized. What kind of future is that for him?”  
This time Clopin kept his mouth shut. He was about to say he never had any of those things and he was fine… if being poor, often in trouble with the law, and a stressed single parent counted as ‘fine.’ He doubted they did, but marriage sounded a lot less dangerous than… wait, married? “I’ll let you fix one if I can fix the other,”   
“Oh, Clopin, but neither of us has any money—“  
“A gypsy wedding!” he exclaimed happily. Most of him was convinced she’d say yes, while a tiny part of his mind was praying for it instead. “We don’t need money for that!”  
“This is… hardly traditional…” Giselle said. This time she didn’t know how to answer, or which ones were the wrong ones. “I mean, I don’t have anything for a dowry…”  
“Oh, we don’t have dowries, we have bride prices. It may take a while still, but I’m sure I can find something eventually. It may be a bit late…I mean, if you agree to that. Besides, I don’t want to be traditional, I’m not marrying someone fourteen!”  
Giselle looked like she was about to cry.  
“Is it something I said?” he asked.   
“My daughter would have turned fourteen by now.” Giselle just stared at Prince sorrowfully.  
“Giselle I…” He sighed. Everything was the wrong answer about that one. He’d even asked one of the soldiers and nearly been arrested for ‘suspicious behavior.’ “I promise. I’ll find out what happened to her, no matter what it takes. In fact… that’s my gift to you for marriage. If you’ll accept it.”  
“You mean it?” Giselle asked.  
“I mean it,” he said proudly. “In fact, I may have a friend in high places soon. Maybe she can help. What do you say?”  
“I’d say it all sounds wonderful. But I’d also say we are getting this child baptized.”  
“Oh, very well,” he conceded, his good mood not a bit hurt by it. “But no wells. I don’t trust kids near wells.”  
“We can do it today!” she said happily. “Our boy baptized on Easter! How special!”  
“Yes… well… can it be a bit less special and we do it after everyone leaves the church?”  
“Why?”  
“Because of them!” Clopin whispered, pointing to Frollo and his boy—whatever his real name was—walking towards the church. “I hope you don’t mind being fashionably late.” Clopin pulled Giselle around the corner to hide. ‘Well, almost whatever it takes,’ Clopin told himself. ‘I am not crossing either of them. I doubt they knew where she went anyway.’

…………

Claude sent Gaetan to go watch the festival. By ‘Go watch’ he meant ‘Go be bored with something somewhere else and I don’t care if it’s Sunday.’ By ‘festival’ he meant Phoebus. Not only did people still have pagan fertility thoughts in their heads this say, but everything about Phoebus was a reason for him not to be around him while with Esmeralda.   
She had not yet shown up and he was already regretting his plan. When she came skipping along, followed by her equally happy goat, he really regretted his plan.  
“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” she said.  
Gaetan had reminded him all week that it was important, above all else, to be polite. He had no idea how to be polite to anyone, let alone a gypsy. When he was a boy, he just kept silent. Now he yelled at people and they kept quiet. He’d already ruined conversations when they’d just started decades ago and he was pretty sure he’d do it again. “I think it’s going to rain,” he said as nicely as he could. Oh course it was going to rain. What idiot would think it was a nice day?  
“I like rain,” she said. That explained that then.  
“It’s so nice of you to take time off just for me,” she said. “You must be so busy!”  
“It’s Easter Sunday—“ he caught himself before he went further. No doubt she had no idea the significance of religious holidays and yelling at her wasn’t going to get him anywhere in the long run. “Of course I can spend a holiday with you. Come, we shouldn’t dally on the steps. Perhaps we could walk somewhere?”  
“Where to?” she asked.  
God damn her to Hell, that wasn’t the answer she was supposed to give. It was easy to listen to her talk if he never had to pay attention and reply all the time. If he wanted to have a real conversation, he’d tell her what to say. “I was wondering if you had anywhere you hoped to go today.” ‘Just pick something!’  
“A stroll would be nice. We could just wander, but, oh, we shouldn’t stray too far! What would people think?”  
‘Obviously, they’d think the same stupid thoughts everyone is thinking about me,’ Claude thought. Why did people get such moronic ideas about him and every woman he went near? He killed and tortured people in jail. When did people stop worrying about that and start making up all these idiotic things about him that involved him not being a good Catholic? “Wandering aimlessly it is then. You lead.”  
Esmeralda looped her arm in his and led him through streets along the fringes of the festival. At first he was angry, assuming she was tugging him along like a toddler that would get lost easily, and then he just decided to put up with it, glad that she hadn’t tried to talk to him about knitting or ponies or colors. At least not yet.   
The two ducked into a series of alleys and she began to lead him just off the edge of the festival.  
“I would love to get to know you better,” she said, putting another hand on his arm for reasons he couldn’t fathom.   
Claude wondered if she was trying the same tactic he was. He’d already suffered the gypsies teasing him about losing his hair and he was certainly not going to give them any more embarrassing information to play with like a kid with matches. No doubt some lunatic was asking about his birthday again. “I really don’t know what to say,” he said. He said it because honestly he didn’t.  
He noticed Djali still tagging along beside them, skipping back and forth in front of them as if to trip them now and then. “Your goat is… trained, right?” He winced. That had to be the stupidest thing in all of history to say.  
“Oh, Djali’s a good goat, don’t worry,” she said, letting go of him and calling the goat over to be picked up. “Aren’t you, Djali? You’re going to be extra nice to him, now aren’t you?” she asked, petting the goat and leaning it toward Frollo. Frollo just stood there, hoping goats were like horses. You waited for them to react to you, and then you reacted to them. Confusing a horse could get you trampled and he presumed confusing a goat could get you eaten.   
Djali shot out of Esmeralda’s arms and leapt away from Frollo, nearly knocking her over in the process.  
Claude grabbed her arm as she began to fall and the goat scampered away in fright. “I don’t think I meant to…do whatever it is I did,” Claude said, releasing Esmeralda’s arm now that she could stand on her own. He wondered how much damage a rampaging goat could do.  
“He’ll get used to you.”  
Claude raised an eyebrow at ‘he,’ but kept it to himself. He was already doing badly and it was a wonder she still stood near him, which, for some reason, he was actually enjoying when he didn’t have to flounder for replies. Besides, she’d figure it out someday.   
“Do you have any pets?”  
“I have an apprentice, he’s sort of like a pet,” he said. Good Saints, he was bad at this. “I own a horse.” That wasn’t a good answer either. Women didn’t like horses, they liked ponies. Pretty ponies they could put ribbons on and brush their hair.  
“Really?” she asked happily. “What kind?”  
“Um…large…black…it’s a destrier, but… I’m sorry, I don’t really breed horses, I just ride them.”  
“One of those huge warhorses?” she asked.  
“Well, I never fought in the war, but he’d be happy to join it if I let him… I mean…um, yes. One of those horses.”   
“Oh, I’ve always wanted to ride one of those!” she exclaimed happily. “It must be so exciting for you!”  
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” they heard. Both of them looked up to see Phoebus standing at the mouth of the alley. “Sir, can I speak with you?”  
Before Claude could reply ‘no,’ Esmeralda spoke up. ”I shouldn’t keep you.” Kissing him on the neck—she aimed for the cheek but wasn’t tall enough—she ran off, her bangles clanging loudly.  
“How come you get her and all I get is some guy your age?” Phoebus complained.  
“Is that why you chased her away?” Claude asked. “Could people stop being complicated for one day?”  
“Actually, I just wanted to talk to you in private about her, sir”  
“Phoebus, go ask Gaetan if you’re curious.”  
“Sir, I meant I’m surprised she’s still alive.”  
“Oh, that,” Claude replied. “Phoebus before you open your mouth, you might want to think very hard—“  
“Consider it a favor,” Phoebus said.  
“Harder than that,” Claude said, his face in his hand.  
“You don’t kill her and I’ll leave you alone.”  
“What, she gets to go armed and I don’t?” Claude asked, taking his hand away. At least Phoebus was finally being concise.  
“Sure you can,” Phoebus said. “Not like there’s a real difference with you; you could kill someone with string.”  
“Should I take that as a compliment?” Claude asked.  
“Sir, at least try to just arrest her if you have to.”  
“Fine.”  
“Really try.”  
“Yes, yes, yes, I understand. Now go away. It’s not like I’ll ever see her again after this anyway,” Claude said angrily, shooing the captain away. “Go get drunk or something, just go away.”  
Phoebus reluctantly left, even though there was no one else in the alley that he could see.  
“Well, that was short lived,” Claude told himself. No wonder people got betrothed. Well, too late now for everything.  
He leaned against a wall and thought. He stood there for a while, wondering what he was going to do. Looking for the woman was out of the question, she could be anywhere and if he asked if people had seen her, they’d think he was mad, in either interpretation of the word, and he’d get no help. He could find some way of annoying the captain, but he couldn’t think of anything. Riding his horse was out of the question with the streets crowded like this. He had almost decided to just go home and read for the day when something began tugging on his tunic.  
Claude looked down to see the goat tugging at the hem of his gown. “Got lost, did you?”   
The goat bleated at him.  
“No, I told him to go and apologize,” Claude heard behind him.  
Startled, he spun around and nearly hit Esmeralda in doing so. “Young…woman, please don’t do that!” He wanted the whereabouts to the Court of Miracles so he had to be polite, but he wasn’t about to call her a lady.  
“You really don’t like festivals, do you?” she asked, giggling.  
“No, not really,” he answered honestly. He wondered what was so funny, though. “What? What’d I do?”  
“You’d rather sit around here than go have fun on a holiday,” she said. “But you always go to them.”  
‘That’s not funny, it’s painful!’ he thought. “I have to go. I am a public official and I have to oversee things in case something happens to anyone. I just never had an apprentice before to take over for me.”   
“I’m sure there’s something you want to do out there,” Esmeralda said, shoving a pile of white flowers at him. “Look, I got free flowers.”  
“Well, that is something, granted I never got free flowers,” he said. “But I’m sorry, I’m just not interested in this or any other festival.”  
“Here,” she said, shoving the flowers into his hands.  
“What--?”  
“Feed them to Djali. He’ll like you,” she said. The goat was already trying to crawl up his legs to devour the bouquet. “Go on,” she said.   
Tentatively, Claude took a few blooms and bent down to hand them to the goat. He thought it was like feeding a horse, but before he could flatten his hand, Djali lunged at the flowers and slurped them out of his hand. Djali was skilled at not hurting hands that held food, but did leave a considerable amount of slobber.   
Esmeralda was nice to be around when she made sense—the Good Lord knew why—and he’d already scared the goat away once. Besides, his horse was known to leave saliva on his hand as well. He hoped he didn’t offend her too much by wiping his hand on the goat before handing it another several flowers.   
“There must be something you want to do,” she said.   
“Nope.” Oops.  
“We could get more flowers,” she said. “But I don’t think Djali should eat that much in one sitting. Let’s see, there’s dancing.”  
“Esmeralda, I do not dance. At all. Ever.”  
“You’re just being modest,” she said.  
“No, I am being serious,” he said. “Quite frankly, I am not allowed.”   
“What do you mean?” she asked.  
“Oh, blast,” he yelled. He stepped in it worse than Phoebus ever did. He threw the flowers on the ground and stood up. As the goat danced about, happily eating up the strewn plants, he stalked off, wondering what rumors this would create. Wonderful. He’d been outdone by a farm animal.  
“Wait,” she said, stepping over Djali and standing on her tiptoes to grab his shoulder. “You can tell me, I promise.”  
Claude looked around. She and the goat were the only people he could see. “Someone is going to die if anyone hears about this,” he said through gritted teeth. “I am serious.”  
“You’re always serious,” she said. This time, she was serious too. No giggling or incomprehensible sentences.  
He sighed. He really didn’t even want to remember this. “My mother forbade me from dancing ever again after I embarrassed her when I was young. I’d rather respect her wishes.” He also rather not think about it. Just the mention of that time brought back memories of the beating and humiliation he suffered not only because his feet went the wrong way at the wrong time but also because his hand grabbed the worst thing to grab to steady himself at any time. It wasn’t his fault, she had asked him to dance even when he politely declined and she was the one who stuffed her chest.   
“I can teach you,” Esmeralda said. “It wouldn’t be going against her wishes to try and learn, would it?”  
“It would if I were seen in public doing so,” he said.   
“Well, then we can do it in private where no one can see you,” she said. “I know a perfect place!”  
“Are you sure about this?” he asked as she pulled him along. He was very certain this would all be much more enjoyable if she just tried to kill him then and there.


	14. Chapter 14

They entered the church through a side door and true to Esmeralda’s word no one was in the transept. The aisle was completely devoid of anyone else and the darkness was soft, like a pillow or the fur of a cat, warm and delicate and smooth, not the usually haunting darkness of ghostly shadows that stalked you, watching your every move and making you feel that even your breathing was unholy.  
Esmeralda thought the place was beautiful; a starlit sky to walk upon and all it lacked was a moon. To Djali, candles should be eaten, not burned and especially not out of reach on metal poles. The same went for the flowers in the incense. To Claude, the cathedral was a house of God and everything in it was conducted so. He wondered what if he’d have to pay penance for being dragged inside by a heathen who was certainly not dressed appropriately for the weather, let alone anything remotely holy.   
“This is a perfect place to dance!” she said.   
“I don’t think I should be doing any of the kind of dancing you do,” he said.   
“I mean court dancing, silly!” she said, batting at his arm. “Like what proper ladies do.”   
“How in the world would you know how to do that?” he asked. No skills, no title, no literacy, no attention to God, and almost no clothes and she could outdo him in something that was mandatory for him? The world was unfair.   
“I have many skills,” she said, a bit too playfully for Claude’s peace of mind.  
“I don’t think I want to know what they are,” he said. “I don’t think I want to do this, either.”  
“Then why are we here?”   
“Because you wouldn’t let go of my arm.”  
“We can go outside and find something else to do,” she said.   
He considered that. “You had better not talk about this to anyone. Ever.”

………………….

Claude wasn’t sure what to think about his lessons. They weren’t going well and he wasn’t surprised. He was, however, embarrassed. He’d never been very sorry he couldn’t dance. Esmeralda had good reason to keep quiet and she actually spent time to encourage him to try again and even told him stories about how she had learned to dance (though they were nothing like his sorry attempts or pathetic disasters). What he didn’t like was that any idiot could fall off an animal, but he was unfortunate and ungraceful enough to be falling off the floor.  
He had no idea how she kept convincing him to try again, or how she convinced him he’d balance better in closed position dancing, or how she convinced him that she would lead (and thus take the man’s role in the dance, he noticed).  
It took several flustered minutes just for her to properly show him where everyone’s hands should be. This time he was glad he could use the excuse that he was off-balance, for it kept her hands off him and his off her.  
“Is this even appropriate?” he asked, then blanched. Not only was it too late now, but it was probably the wrong thing to say. Not to mention he had asked it to his mother and been struck with her book above the ear.  
“Refined ladies and gentlemen do it,” Esmeralda said. “and they’re proper and dignified all the time. It would only be inappropriate if you think about it that way.” He wasn’t even going to start arguing that logic. “Now, I put my hand on your waist…um…that should be here more or less.” She put her hand against his ribs instead, never actually having found where his waist was under the shapeless gown and he didn’t want to help her. “Now your hand goes on my shoulder… no, you have to get a bit closer.” She had stopped counting how many times she explained these things with almost the exact same words and the exact same problems. “Now bring your feet in a little closer—closer to me.”   
She had to steady him before he tripped and they both wondered how he could so easily to hold his own in a fight against three men on solid ice in the streets and yet he had so much difficulty at this, even when he was just supposed to be standing still.  
“Okay, my hand goes—“ Claude yelped. “Uh, too low, sorry. Here, put your hand back on my shoulder. Now, we step to the left—your left. You just follow.”  
Surprisingly, this time, the two managed a step of a dance successfully. However, this part of dancing was made of two steps, and as Esmeralda took a larger step Claude did his best to follow, only for his foot to put itself in front of the path of hers. She tripped and fell forward, knocking him backwards. In his sad attempt to balance, his elbow met painfully with tall candelabra, which also lost its balance.  
In the end of it all, Claude could barely make out someone’s screams of “What’s going on back there?” over a pounding headache caused by the floor telling his head how much it objected to being landed on. The goat, which Esmeralda had told to be a lookout, ran over and began bleating in his ear.  
“I heard you the first time!” he yelled as Esmeralda tried to shove herself up.  
“I think I’m pinned,” she said, and tried to reach backwards to reach the candelabra that now lay across her back.  
Claude tried to reach to help, but only grazed it with his fingertips. “Yes, I know, go away!” he yelled, shoving the goat away and shoving himself up on his elbows to a sitting position. Esmeralda’s head slid from his chest and landed in his lap. He leaned over and pulled the candelabra up off her back, only for someone to yank it out of his hands.  
“Frollo, I said ‘favor’ not ‘miracle!’” the archdeacon yelled. “Ick! I don’t even wan to know what you were using this for.” He threw the candelabra to the side.  
Esmeralda by now managed to sit up. She pushed her hair out of her face and smiled sheepishly.  
“Frollo when I told you I wished you’d change your mind about gypsies, this was not what I meant!” The archdeacon kicked him in the back, knocking Claude’s hat over his face. “And I don’t even want to know why a goat is involved!” The archdeacon helped Esmeralda stand and pulled her away from Claude. “Get out of my cathedral and never come back!”  
Claude sadly shoved his hat back and stood up. Silently, he walked away into the darkness, listening to the archdeacon try to console Esmeralda about her ‘terrifying ordeal.’ If anyone deserved consolation, it was him. He was the one that hit his head.  
Now everything was a lot more complicated than trying to figure out how to get her out of his head or to find the Court of Miracles. Just as he feared, she had cost him his soul. He just didn’t expect it to happen out of stupidity rather than malice.   
It wasn’t fair. He had done his best to be a good catholic. He may have failed in some of his parent’s expectations of him, but he had always respected and honored them. He went to mass when he could. He went to confession. He was baptized, confirmed and had communion. He never swore. Up until now he never let himself dwell on unholy thoughts—and even it was never a matter of allowing himself to do it for he was always shocked when he realized what he was doing—and he made sure he paid for it in strict prayer. He even paid for killing that gypsy woman on the cathedral steps even though he still didn’t know what he did wrong. Now none of that mattered thanks to accidentally falling on a large piece of metal.  
It wouldn’t be the last time he’d have problems staying on his feet in the cathedral that day. As he pushed the doors opened, his foot caught on something that bleated to tell him to look here he was going.   
He managed to catch his hat and to his surprise, someone else caught him before he slammed into the door. Skinny arms pulled him back to his feet from a bit too low around his hips for his taste. “Let go, I can walk,” he said, trying to shove her away. All he hit was air and the goat was still standing in his way, preventing him from leaving. “Haven’t you done enough damage today?” he asked. “And stop standing behind me, I don’t like it.”  
Esmeralda slipped under his still outstretched arm and leaned on him.  
“That was not what I meant,” he said. “Do you have any idea—“  
“I fixed all that,” she said.  
“This is not a joke! I—“  
“No, really. I talked to him,” she said. “I cleared it all up. He said he wouldn’t mention your mother if you never told anyone anything about his.”  
Claude raised an eyebrow. Bringing the archdeacon’s family into this wasn’t some lie she could just make up.  
“Um, what--?”  
“Maybe I’ll let you know later,” he said.  
A loud thunderclap and a flash of bright light scared Djali to hide between its mistress’s legs.  
Claude walked out of the church into a heavy downpour and Esmeralda insisted on clinging to his side. He lifted his cloak over her head and looked at her, utterly perplexed. He felt rather uncomfortable with her holding onto him. She wasn’t hurting him and her hands were actually in innocent places now. All she wanted was to stay out of the rain and look at him. She had even gone to the trouble of clearing his name with the archdeacon, something Phoebus might not do if ordered, so why would a gypsy be nice enough to do that for him for free? It was actually pleasant with her being around, he found, now that she had thrown away the silly idea of talking like a delirious poet. That was exactly what was making him uncomfortable. Whatever was going on, shouldn’t. He only wished he knew what it was.  
Esmeralda herself wondered what to say. Usually she didn’t have to because all the men she had been with either did all the talking for both of them or were too preoccupied with her chest—or taking her shirt off of it—to listen anyway. Why did she have to get the only straight man that would look into her eyes when she needed him to be like all the other slobs in the world?  
Looking into his eyes, she realized why some spoke of his gaze being made of the coldest, frozen ice, while others swore there was hell’s own fire behind them. His eyes were a pale grey, picking up colors around them rather than having their own when they could. They took in the dark grey of the clouds and the stone around him, and the shining black of her hair, creating a kaleidoscope of sad darkness around his watchful pupils.  
She reached up and touched his face, hoping it would make up for her silence. He tried to pull away, but some part of him wanted to stay put, even though it seemed afraid for some reason. His gaze fled from her face and tried to watch her hand. To her surprise, his face was smooth and soft, feeling far younger than she had originally thought. Age had not worn his skin away from his face, but chiseled it closer, etching lines into firm flesh instead of weathering away at it like leather.  
“You really are a terrible dancer,” she said to him.  
“I know,” he agreed, grimacing.  
“That’s okay. I’m a terrible cook.”  
“Well then, I know who to blame if I’m ever poisoned,” he said.  
She laughed and he wondered if it was all that funny. He also wondered why her hand was still there.  
“Well, here’s your rain,” he said, looking up at the clouds. “Is there somewhere I should walk you to?”  
“No,” she said. “I actually have to go meet a friend.” She stood on her toes and kissed him lightly on his cheek. “I had fun today.”  
Claude reached up and touched his cheek tentatively as he watched her run off and disappear into the city… his city. He wondered if he wanted to allow her in the city. He wondered if he ever wanted to see her again, even if he’d never have her Court of Miracles. He wondered if he should go home and wash his face or if he’d feel sorry if the rain washed it away.

…………..

Claude threw the door open and walked across the hall of his house, ignoring the puddles he left on the floor Gaetan had nearly finished cleaning. He threw himself into his chair and rubbed his aching head. “Is it considered successful on one of these excursions of you’re nearly excommunicated?”  
“It would depend upon why,” she said, starting to wipe up the puddles.  
“I’ll tell you when you’re older… maybe… probably not.”  
“Then yes.”  
“What do I do now?”  
“More flowers?” she asked.  
“Again? Merciful Lord, when do I marry her?”  
Gaetan moved to another puddle.  
“I asked you a question.”  
“I don’t know, I’ve never been courted,” she answered.   
“Why not?” he demanded.  
“Because I didn’t want anything to do with it.”  
“Good reason,” he conceded. He didn’t want her thinking about romance short of explaining the basic formula to him. Admittedly his mother had been educated and upper-class and never managed to explain it, but his mother was fluent in the language of women and Gaetan was better suited and more skilled at speaking in the tongue of men. He preferred to think of her as a naïve to the language, rather than a skilled outsider. “But surely even your mother had the brains to at least think of marriage for one of you.”  
“My mother wanted to marry that new man, but neither of them had any money.”  
“Well then why would she get married to him?” And exactly how did a stupid woman like that have a smart kid like Gaetan and why wasn’t she born a boy?  
“She wanted to get married for love,” Gaetan said.  
“That’s not why you get married,” Claude said. He was going to have to set a lot of things right for this kid. “You get married to get things you want, not because you love someone. Think of the anarchy you’d get if people married because of that! My mother wanted money and my father wanted status. I want her to tell me the Court of Miracles and if I marry her I can make her. She wants… well, I’m not sure what she wants. I hope it’s not kids.”

………….

Days later, Claude had sent Phoebus off with Gaetan and he was about to settle his horse back in its stable when he met up with Esmeralda again.  
He had turned to put his leg on part of the fence to rub his pained knee and when looked up, she was standing on the other side of the fence. Claude was uncomfortable again and this time she wasn’t even touching him. She wasn’t even looking at him. He felt pressed to say something and obligated to stick around.  
Instead of doing either, he pulled on the reigns of his horse before it tried to protect him from an attacking gypsy.  
“How do you do that?” Claude asked.  
“Trade secret,” she answered.  
“Where’s your goat?” Claude asked, still pulling on the reigns. Hopefully his horse hadn’t killed it already.  
“He’s hiding,” she said. “I like your horse.”  
“Yes, well—Down!—He doesn’t seem to like you.”  
“I’d love to ride a horse like that.”  
“And I’m sure he’d like to eat a person like you—I said down!”   
Snorting, the destrier stopped. The horse, despite what Claude had planned, thought of him as a friend rather than master. It helped out as best it could. It protected the human that took care of it, and took him where he wanted to go. The poor human was practically crippled with only two slow legs and such a small size. His friend did seem to try and make up for it with his opposable thumbs though. For some reason, his friend was pulling him away and acting mean and confusing in his attempts to scare the threatening newcomer off.  
“Good horse,” Claude told it and it held still.  
The horse leaned over to sniff Esmeralda. His friend didn’t even act this way about that little girl he often smelled of. This was one of those strange people his friend tended not to like. If he was going to sit still and let her come near his friend, he was going to know as much as he could about her.  
“Just stand still; don’t move at all,” Claude told her.  
Esmeralda didn’t move. The horse’s head was bigger than hers and she didn’t doubt that it could eat it in one bite. After meticulously smelling her, the horse gave a disapproving shove with its head and backed away to sniff Claude.  
“He’s not really one for other people, I’m sorry,” Claude said, petting the horse. He really wanted to tell her to go away and leave his horse alone. He didn’t want to be sorry. His horse could like and not like who it wanted.  
Esmeralda watched quietly as the destrier insisted on sniffing Claude’s nose. The horse wanted to promise its friend that he wasn’t mad at him. Yes, his best friend in the world still loved him very much, proven by letting him intimately exchange breath. There were too many smells on his friend for the destirer to leave the newcomer alone. His friend liked her, in more ways than one, that was understandable in allowing her to be close by. But there were other smells. He smelled of anger towards her, but even more there was fear. The horse moved to stand in between the two. He didn’t know why his friend was angry or afraid, but he wasn’t about to let this newcomer hurt him.  
The horse didn’t understand, but if he did, or if he knew Claude didn’t know what he was feeling himself, it would have laughed. The horse gave a snort to tell her she could only be around if his friend continued to smell like he liked her.  
“What’s his name?” she asked.  
“I just call him Horse,” Claude said, petting the horse’s mane. “Some soldiers named my last horse Snowball and they call this one the same thing because he looks the same.”  
“I’d at least name him Biscuit,” she said.  
“My horse is not to be called Biscuit!” Claude said.  
The horse agreed.  
“Well, mine always come out black,” she said. “Maybe I can ride him someday.”  
The horse turned away to show he didn’t like her and hoped she’d go away. He didn’t want her riding him.   
“Esmeralda, my horse is not a pony!”  
“I know. I hate ponies.”  
Claude looked at the horse, which was now sniffing his pockets. “He goes quite fast.”  
“I’m sure you wouldn’t let me fall,” Esmeralda said.  
“No, I’d let nothing happen to you,” he said. “and I am sure I could have all the accommodations prepared within a week if you’re willing to help.”

…………………

“Mister!” a kid yelled at the puppetmaster, who was draped across the ledge of the cart and was trying to sleep. He hadn’t slept all night, so afternoon would have to do. One screaming little kid had kept him up all night and now another one wanted the job. “Mister!” the kid yelled again.  
“What?” Clopin complained groggily as he was forced to wake up.  
“Is there a story today?” the kid asked.  
“Yeah, sure, here’s a story: Once upon a time two people fell in love and had a baby. They were already too poor to get married, and they could hardly feed the baby. The baby didn’t understand and cried a lot and kept anyone from getting any sleep. One day the father had been driven so insane by trying to care for himself and the baby and worrying about the mother that when some little kid woke him up from the only sleep he had been able to get in days, he strangled the kid and got to sleep in a nice happy jail cell. The end. Go away.”  
“That’s not a very good story,” the kid said.  
“Look kid,” Clopin said angrily as he grabbed the kid’s shirt. “Unless you’ve got some miracle cure for colic, there is absolutely nothing that could stop me from wringing your puny little neck and hiding your body just to get another few hours of sleep!”  
“Nothing?” an all too familiar voice asked in an all too cheerful tone.  
Clopin screamed and jumped, releasing the kid in his surprise. The child ran off crying.  
“You are the last person I’d expect to stop me from doing that, Frollo,” Clopin muttered. Why was it that every time the minister was a in a good mood, he had to ruin Clopin’s?  
“Actually, I was hoping to see some entertainment, but he’s run off. More’s the pity.”  
“I’m almost starting to understand drowning kids,” Clopin said, pathetically falling across the ledge again. He hoped he could get back to sleep, arrested or not.  
“Too bad,” Claude casually commented.  
Clopin knew the man was just here to because he couldn’t find anyone else to annoy.  
“Now the show just doesn’t hold up without the second act.”  
Clopin felt someone tap him on the shoulder. He tried to wave them off, but they pounded on his head. That didn’t seem very in character for Frollo, so he looked up. A gypsy woman slapped him in the face, screamed at him in Spanish, thrust Prince into his arms, and stormed off.  
“Yeah, well knowing your dog, it deserved it!” Clopin yelled back. Maybe if he ignored Frollo, he’d go away. It took a long time, but it had worked with the plague.   
Prince immediately started howling and screaming.  
“Here, shut up and eat the hat,” Clopin said, shoving his hat at the child.  
Prince happily giggled as he played with the hat for a few seconds before spitting up all over it. Then the baby went back to playing with it and sticking a cleaner part in its mouth. Clopin sighed and set the baby and the hat down on the floor.  
“Now that was entertaining,” Claude said, tossing a coin onto the ledge. “Do you plan on an encore?”  
How in the world did this man survive raising Quasimodo for twenty years on his own and still find time to go around making everyone else more miserable than he was? If only there was a way to just once turn the table on that horrible man—“You want an encore? I’ll give you an encore!” Clopin screamed and grabbed the minister’s robes.  
“What?” Claude yelped. “Get off me! Let go! I’ll have you arrested!”  
“Good, I can get some sleep for once!”  
“I’ll have you tortured!”  
“My baby beat you to it!”  
“I’ll have you killed!”  
“Good, you can take care of him!” Clopin’s grip tightened. “You’ve taken care of kids before, I’m sure you know what that kind of mania can do to a man!”  
Claude didn’t reply. He grabbed the roof of the puppet stand and tried to shove the puppeteer off with his foot. “What do you want?” he yelled, finding that not even that would budge the man.  
“Teach me how to take care of kids!”  
“What?” Claude asked. He was about to call for the guards, but this would be the worst situation he could conceive of to call attention to himself. “Absolutely not! I don’t want anything to do with there being more of you people! Let go!”  
“I’ll give you anything!”  
“There is nothing I want from you!” Aside from him letting go, of course. Going for his dagger would unbalance him and he’d be dragged closer to the gypsy. He was already too close for comfort and he didn’t doubt that he would be forced to take on another child if he killed the man. “Let go!”  
“You can marry Esmeralda! I’ll do what ever stupidity you people do to give her away and everything!”  
Claude paused for a moment, but still kept his foot where it was to keep away from the screaming, frantic gypsy. “You do know the laws we have about marriage?”  
“Yes, I know all about your barbaric customs!” Clopin yelled. “Now do you see how desperate I am?” He also knew any marriage was null and void without consent of both parties. The man could try for a million yeas and he’d never even get Esmeralda in a church with him.  
“You’d be signing a contract,” Claude said. “I don’t even think you can spell a Q.”  
“Then show me how!”  
“Fine, fine. Now let go.”  
“You promise?” Clopin demanded, tugging harder.  
“Yes, now let go of me, you’re going to rip something.”  
Clopin let go and he toppled forward and Claude struggled to take his leg out of the window of the cart.   
“Meet me at the Palace of Justice tomorrow at noon. If you can read clocks.” Claude said, smoothing down his gown.  
“The Palace of Justice?” Clopin yelped.  
Claude immediately backed away, thinking he was about to be attacked again. “No wonder your child is so loud.”  
“I’ll be tortured.”  
“Oh course you will,” Claude said, adjusting his hat. “Just not by me.” Claude left for home before anyone else could get him entangled in yet another inconceivable mess.  
“Is there a Q in my name?” Clopin asked himself.


	15. Chapter 15

This time Claude approached Esmeralda. Neither of them spoke of it, but it had taken two hours for him to build up the courage to come close and actually start a conversation instead of just standing and watching. Esmeralda wished the man would talk to his little apprentice or, better yet, his captain on talking to women.  
Esmeralda wasn’t sure what to think of this outing. He said very little as he daintily let her take his arm and they strolled down the streets. All he said before they reached the shop was that she needed to be properly attired for his plans. After they got to the tailor shop, he barely said anything else, merely saying that proper women wore shoes and more concealing dresses. He said he was going for modesty, not fashion and told the tailors to do what they could with her figure within a week and that he’d pay when he came back. She didn’t understand why he felt he could just leave, abandoning her to psychotic women armed with needles and pins who insisted in tugging at her and arranging her in unnatural positions to measure her in places she had no idea ever needed to be measured. She also didn’t know her figure needed ‘doing with.’ She thought he liked it the way it was.  
She pouted, wondering if proper women needed all this just to go out to dinner and if not, why couldn’t she have thought of asking for that instead?

…………

Claude wasn’t quite comfortable with the present situation regarding the judicial process in Paris. Mostly, it wasn’t happening. He’d followed Gaetan and she proved herself competent and alert. Phoebus was competent in his own right and his communication problem was absent when it came to taking and giving real orders. The only snag with trusting the law with Phoebus was that he was distracted by young women like a cat with a piece of string. Claude was convinced Phoebus would even start batting at them enthusiastically if he weren’t around. He had tried letting the man learn his lesson by not rescuing him from irate husbands, but the captain was apparently a slow learner at everything.  
Something was odd and he knew what it was, but he didn’t know where to look. This was Paris, a giant city of a million of the second and third worst people he could think of. The third were idiots, and that was a worldwide plague. You could never be free of those. The second were the gypsies and as much as he tried, their numbers didn’t seem to be going down. From what he’d seen yesterday, the two were interbreeding. The first were the English and thankfully most of them had been chased away. But with such a huge amount of these misbegotten people, why were his cells so empty? If no one was trying anything mean, what was keeping anyone from being stupid?  
Something suspicious was up if people were trying so hard to prevent anyone from being stupid. Somewhere, people were plotting something, and they had to wait to strike because they had their hands on the mouths and ears of idiots. Could it be the gypsies again? No, they were never this organized and as much as they guarded their whereabouts and any of their friends, they could not possibly rally together to try something.   
It was probably that man and his baby keeping everyone up and they needed more sleep to try to pick pockets.   
Confident that the gypsies were under control, proud that he’d soon find their Court of Miracles, but still wondering what was going on, Claude went to the Palace of Justice, for once dreading it himself. 

…………..

“You’re two hours late,” Claude yelled as Clopin’s arrival was fanfared by his child’s screams. Didn’t he have one place in here that didn’t echo?  
“What?” Clopin yelled, then went immediately silent as he wandered into the room where the minister was sitting on a barrel, angrily covering his ears.  
As much as Claude liked the fact that this gypsy’s first reaction to seeing him was to panic, it wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He stood up and the gypsy jumped back, only making things more difficult. Using a much more careful strategy this time to steal the baby, Claude flipping the man’s soggy hat over his eyes and then tore the baby from the man’s hands as he was distracted. Clopin shoved his hat back angrily, only to see Claude bouncing the baby in his arms. Clopin smirked as the baby continued to scream. Undaunted, Claude just set the baby against his shoulder and waved the veil of his hat at the baby. The baby’s loud screams turned into slightly less loud exclamations of wonder, then burbled away as it tried to grab the red fabric. “Yes, yes, there we go,” Claude said, bouncing the baby again. “There, how is that so difficult?”  
“How is that so easy?” Clopin retorted.  
“What is her name?” Claude asked.  
“It’s a boy,” Clopin muttered angrily. It was a very handsome baby boy. How dare anyone, especially a man in a dress, accuse his son of being a girl?  
“How should I know, you people stab everyone’s ears with these things,” Claude protested, batting at Prince’s large hoop earrings. He wanted to say that the hair, which had never been cut, wasn’t a good indication either, but he’d never seen a gypsy who tried to follow that norm.  
Prince grabbed the veil that finally fell in reach over Claude’s shoulder as he bent down to argue. Gleeful he’d finally caught his prey, the baby promptly shoved is in his mouth and drooled before it could get away again.  
“Yes, you’d know a lot about stabbing people,” Clopin retorted. “And his name is Prince.”  
“Prince?” Claude repeated in disapproval.   
Despite his objections, Prince made a happy, yet unpronounceable sound.  
“What kind of a name is that?” Claude muttered. His opinion on names would be forever scarred thanks to his parent’s discussions over whether or not he should be around people based on their names. He never really understood any real pattern to it, but royalty was not only out the window, but run over in the street ever since his mother complained about his father having owned a dog by the name of Duke, even if he was eight when he named him.  
“Uh, his mother named him. No real significance at all,” Clopin said. “Can I--?”  
“Yes, here,” Claude said, shoving the baby into Clopin’s arms. “Your baby stinks. Go find somewhere to change it!”  
Clopin ran off and Prince immediately began screaming.  
‘You and me both,’ Claude thought.  
Somewhere, while Claude was sitting on his barrel again, the child quieted. He wondered if the idiot gypsy had actually learned something, but he realized instead that God must be having a very good laugh at him when Clopin returned. He didn’t even know diapers could have bad fashion sense. One side was pinned, and the other side was wrapped over the baby’s hip and came back over his shoulder and was shoved into his mouth.  
“For future reference, don’t let him help,” Claude said. “And I think I can solve one of your problems.” He took the edge of the diaper from the child’s mouth, only for Prince to grab his finger and use that as a replacement.  
“How in the world could you of all people ever know how to take care of children?” Clopin complained, then realized not only that he’d said it aloud, but who he said it in front of. He was used to whining his complaints about the minister to anyone who would listen, especially since that was usually only himself.  
“If I told you that I really would have to kill you,” Claude said. “You are far too talkative to tell…and I don’t want you talking about this either.”  
“Trust me, I won’t,” Clopin said, rolling his eyes. The fact that he’d been with Giselle had been no secret and had already caused trouble. Some people apparently hadn’t been too keen on his ‘No killing Frollo’s new kid’ policy either. No one could like this. But it was his only option, aside from being a bungling deaf parent forever and losing Giselle over it eventually. Asking any of the other gypsies would indeed look like he was too incompetent to take care of them if he couldn’t take care of a tiny child on his own. Giselle wasn’t going to be too happy after he admitted he’s been ad-libbing child rearing when he was all she and Prince had. He’d already gotten in trouble asking about one kid to the French; asking for parenting tips wasn’t going to be much better and news of it might leak to Giselle.  
Claude took his finger away. “I’d step back and rub that baby’s back if I were you.”  
“Why?”  
“I’d shut up and do it,” Claude said, pulling his legs close and pulling his hat over his ears.  
Clopin held Prince away from him and rubbed his back. He felt like Claude was playing a very stupid prank on him and couldn’t see how anyone smarter than a cow could have fun making him stand funny and play with the baby.  
Prince spat up what had to be half his body weight and let out a belch Clopin was sure would be rude in the dirtiest of taverns. Finished, Prince giggled and looked for something to put in his mouth.  
“Hey!” Clopin exclaimed happily. “He shut up!”  
“Yes, I’m a genius, aren’t I?” Claude muttered. This was going to be the longest day in his entire life.

………………..

“Exactly why can’t the mother take care of the child?” Claude asked. Prince was still learning that unlike his father, this man couldn’t be tricked into letting him take his hat away to eat it. Instead, the baby decided to attempt to gum Claude’s hand to death and marvel at the sparkles in his jewelry.   
“Long story, very boring, wouldn’t interest you,” Clopin said, turning the contract upside down to convince Frollo of his illiteracy. In fact, he could read, and rather well, not just for a gypsy but for any peasantry. It was writing he had a difficult time with. After twenty years of practice, he could barely make any letter legible and he still had no idea how to hold a pen. He never planned to write his name so Frollo’s soldiers could never trace anything back to him and after today, he never wanted to again.  
“I tend to hear that a lot by people who break the law,” Claude said.   
“Speaking of long and boring,” Clopin said, ignoring Claude’s statement. “I thought you said this was a marriage contract. I’m giving her away, not willing my stuff to twenty people… not that I have much stuff.” It did indeed actually say everything it should. There were no tricks Clopin could see. It was, in fact, a normal marriage contract for a father to sign his daughter away with. Clopin wanted to do his best to test the minister, though not too much because the man had his baby. Too much trouble and he’d never hold Prince again. He was already mad that the kid was quieter in Frollo’s arms than he had been while asleep in his.  
“It is.”  
“Then why is it so long?”  
“Because it’s a legal document,” Claude said, wiping his gooey hand on Prince’s long black hair. Prince didn’t understand, but thought it was a fun game and squealed happily.  
“Then read it to me,” Clopin said.  
“If I did, we’d be here two more days just for me to explain what half the words meant.”  
“That’s all it is, then?” Clopin asked.  
“Yes. It’s about marriage and nothing else. Are you going to sign it or not?”  
“I would, but I don’t know how to spell my name.”  
“Well, it’s not like I would know,” Claude complained. “I don’t even know what your name is.” He also didn’t care.  
“My name is Clopin,” Clopin said.  
“I need your full name,” Claude grumbled.  
Prince giggled at what he considered the two men making funny faces at each other. Clopin sneered disdainfully and Claude was trying to contain a raging headache and glared at the man who’d found a way to give him almost as much trouble as the archdeacon. To Prince, this was better than eating socks.  
“Clopin Trouillefou,” Clopin said. It wasn’t like he was really using his last name, nor was anyone else. To the French, he was ‘That man with the puppets’ or ‘Hey, you.’ Most of the gypsies didn’t know his last name, let alone use it.  
“Strange, I always assumed you all had Spanish names,” Claude said, switching arms to hold Prince. He’d need his writing arm soon if he was going to get rid of this gypsy without having wasted the day with him and getting nothing in return. “Like Esmeralda.”  
“Why would I have a name like that?” Clopin argued. “That’s a girl’s name.”  
“Never mind. Here, see if you can make a scribble that looks anything like this,” Claude said, writing the name down on the table. The table was already half covered in notes. Some were about executions and former prisoners, some were about remembering to do something for his cook—whom he never mentioned by name—nearly half were abut who owed him money for different reasons. One note said ‘Note to self: find something to write notes on instead of table.’   
Lots of illiterate people signed legal contracts. Even idiots want to get married and many more paid bail or owed someone something they wished they didn’t. More often than that, idiots got themselves killed and other idiots argued who got their idiotic stuff. Claude had seen people write down random words, backwards letters, names that were unpronounceable given the disarrangement or lack of letters, and even strange symbols that couldn’t possibly belong to any foreign language. He was actually amazed that Clopin managed to write something legible—barely—and actually correct in how one would write it—despite holding the pen backwards at first.  
“Can I have my kid back now?” Clopin asked. He didn’t like Frollo touching the baby and the fact that Prince enjoyed being held by the man made him want to find someone to perform an exorcism. He was going to work hard to get Prince to hate the guy, as a proper gypsy king should. It was unbecoming for the child to giggle while on the minister’s knee. Well, Clopin was going to find some way to fix that… how he was not sure, but he was confident he’d figure something out someday—or that Frollo would solve it himself.  
“How old were you when you had Esmeralda? Five?” Claude was actually just guessing at Esmeralda’s age. He knew she was older than Gaetan and younger than he was, but there were a lot of numbers in that range.  
“I’m not her real father,” Clopin said, then realized how much trouble he’d be in if he didn’t explain. “I’m just a stand-in. Have been her whole life.”  
“Ah, father by proxy,” Claude mused.  
“I don’t know who that is, but whatever she said is all lies,” Clopin huffed.  
“Never mind,” Claude said. “Here, take your baby and go away. I just wanted to know if it’s legal.”  
“Yes, this is one thing you don’t have to worry about in getting Esmeralda to move into whatever cemetery or wherever it is you live,” Clopin said, taking Prince away and trying to hold the baby as far from the minister as possible. “But don’t go waving it around; I don’t want people to know about it.”  
“Good. I don’t want people to know about today either.” How did he keep getting himself into situations where he couldn’t kill people?  
“An exchange of favors, then,” Clopin said.   
“How about I just consider it a reason not to kill you?”  
“Whatever lets you sleep at night,” Clopin said, and started to leave. “If you do sleep.”  
“I do indeed; I am not magic!” Claude exclaimed. “Although tonight I’m going to be having nightmares.”

…………

Clopin made up a story about Frollo arresting him because he hadn’t arrested any gypsies recently, but he picked the wrong man to tangle with (Clopin didn’t know anything to begin with) and it was indeed a terrifying ordeal, one from which Prince would never recover (thus explaining why the baby was so quiet from now on).  
Some believed him, some were even more suspicious than before, some were just glad the baby was quiet now.  
Clopin became suspicious now. Frollo’s cells were empty of gypsies. Why, then, was he the only one happy about all this? Well, he’d get to the bottom of all this…. after making up for all the sleep Prince had cost him. 

………………

Frollo didn’t need to make anything up. He told Phoebus and Gaetan that he had someone tortured and didn’t want to talk about it. Phoebus didn’t want to know and Gaetan didn’t ask.  
Gaetan never asked. Usually, Claude was fine with this. In fact, it was what he depended on. If anything was important, she’d tell him. If not, she wouldn’t and thus he didn’t have to care. She could deal with her own problems and they didn’t even have to exist for him.  
Except they did—or would—and she wasn’t talking. The entire city was being too quiet and he couldn’t do anything about that. Well, at least there was one female he could talk to without feeling awkward about it.  
He put his arm around her head—she was far too short to put it around her back—and put his hand on her shoulder. “Stop giving me that look; that’s an order captain,” he said and led her home…to his home. He didn’t know if she thought of it as her own home and didn’t care. That wasn’t the topic at hand.  
“My boy, you haven’t said a word about Esmeralda. You do understand the how things will change, don’t you?”  
Gaetan had gotten used to him calling her a boy. She stopped being surprised that he took a while to remember her real gender in late March. “What will change?” she asked.  
“Oh, you poor boy,” Claude said, pulling her closer and tightening his grip on her shoulder. “Such a horrid upbringing for someone with your mind—Phoebus hasn’t been rubbing off on you about gypsies, has he?”  
“No, master,” she said, shaking her head.   
“I can’t imagine how you’d ever forget what they tried to do to you. Those innocent people! That poor child! And to think he nearly took your life! But do not worry. Once I have Esmeralda, I will have the mystery to their hidden lair and you will have nothing to fear from people like that. Do you understand that much?”  
“Yes, master. Except Esmeralda will be free.”  
“Oh, you have no idea about the laws of marriage, do you?” he said, almost laughing. “The wife obeys the husband. As much as the two are devoted to keeping each other happy, he is the one in control.” More or less. His father let his mother do what she wanted and she let him do what he wanted. His mother did take on his father’s last name and he was in charge of the money if she ever wanted to spend it. Then again, Claude’s mother did badger him to impress ladies because he could tell them what to do after they were married. “Frankly, I’m allowed to do what I want with her, so long as I don’t kill her. I won’t let her carry on with those cruel gypsy tricks of hers, especially if she tries any of them on you.”  
“But—“ she started. She wondered what kind of house the manor would turn into. What did he mean he was allowed to do whatever he wanted? As far as she knew, he wanted the whereabouts of the magical Court of Miracles, which she still didn’t believe in. He didn’t need Esmeralda after that. What was he going to do afterwards? What would he do to get it? Did it involve her? What did he mean he wouldn’t let Esmeralda do anything to her? “I don’t understand, master. Why would she try anything on me?”  
“If I marry, she would be giving you orders as well. Do you understand now?”  
“Yes, master.”  
He stopped walking and put a finger to her chin as he bent down to look her in the eyes. “Really, is that all you have to say? There must be something concerning you about this. It must be such a terrifying thought, living with a gypsy. I’ve had months to think this over and it is the only sure way I could ever find a way to protect you and all the other children in Paris.”  
Gaetan thought about this. Apparently, she was supposed to be scared of Esmeralda. Gaetan had never been scared of Esmeralda. She had been scared of the implications of some things Esmeralda said, but that wasn’t the same. Was Esmeralda safer than other gypsies and they were what she was supposed to be afraid of? She was afraid of gypsies. She was also afraid of the French. She’d kicked many of both in the face and thrown rocks at a lot more. True, a gypsy had tried to kill her, but so had a Frenchman. Well, the gypsy had been the one to kill two other people and abduct a child to get to her just to kill the kid, leaving the body in an alley. Was Esmeralda like that? What did happen on Easter? Had she tried to kill him? If so, why was he seeing her again? Why didn’t he just fight her in self-defense and ask for the Court of Miracles with her in the dungeons? Did he lose a fight? How was that possible?  
Claude could see her questioning look turn into a frightened one. His hand moved from her chin to her cheek. “Don’t be afraid, you can tell me.” Truthfully, he wondered if she was slow like Phoebus or hand never actually thought about this before.  
“Will she really be that dangerous?” Gaetan asked.   
“She will not be while under my control, I will see to that. Do not worry; the woman will learn to be happy. But before I can tame her, she will still be dangerous. I want you to help me.”  
Gaetan wondered what he was talking about now. Sure, three people would live in a house together. First, he mentioned that he’d live happily, being in total control and having the Court of Miracles. Then he mentioned that Esmeralda would live happily. But he wasn’t talking about three people, he was talking about two people. What help did he need from her? Weren’t all those flowers working? “What do I do, master?” What could possibly be the answer?  
“I need you to guard me. I want you to keep watch from a distance and I want you to act like a gentleman. She will feel safer from me with you around, and I certainly will be. Can you do that?”  
“Of course I can, master.”  
“Oh, good boy. Thank you. It means so much that I have someone to depend on, someone who watches me, who obeys me. You will tell me immediately if you have problems with Esmeralda, won’t you?  
“Yes, master.”  
“Very good. Now come along, there’s work to be done at the house.”


	16. Chapter 16

“I know you’re not that into the figurines,” Quasimodo said. In fact, Gaetan had been interested in the figurines. She was awed by how easily he could carve and paint. She loved listening to him explain about the people he’d seen. Sometimes he tried to explain parts of the Bible using them to act out the story or allegory, but it only worked for so long. She wasn’t interested in dolls, even when she found it amusing that the figurine of Frollo was often used as God. “I wanted to show you this, though.” He took a figurine from within the model cathedral and handed it to Gaetan. It was a small figure of her, flat-chested and armed with a dagger. “It took me a while to get it right, and by that time I had to start over.”  
Gaetan’s hair had grown out since the last time it was cut. Her bangs covered her eyebrows and tried in vain to get into her eyes. Meanwhile, the rest of her hair was free to grow over her ears and even reached her chin in the front. The doll’s hair was better groomed than her own, which was determined to part in a zigzag.  
“I love it,” she said. “It just needs a horse to fall off of.”  
“I wanted to make it a girl, but I figured there wasn’t any real difference.”  
“But I can only be a girl up here,” she said, setting the doll on top of the cathedral behind the doll of Quasimodo.  
“What about at home?” he asked.  
“I haven’t been at home since—oh, you mean at the master’s house. No, I’m still a boy there. I think he prefers it that way.”  
“I haven’t seen him since last year,” Quasimodo said, now worried. “Is he still hurt?”  
“He’s better now,” she said. She took Frollo’s doll and set it in front of the cathedral from where it lay amongst the pile of townspeople in the square. “I think he wants me to take over in visiting you. Besides, he’s been preoccupied with a girl.”   
“That sounds romantic,” Quasimodo mused, shuffling through his female dolls. “I see a lot of couples from the tower at night. I think its sweet he found someone.”  
“Sweet is not the world I’d use,” Gaetan grumbled. He may have seen cute rendezvous’ or simple little trysts, but she had spent years sleeping under tables trying to drown out noises she thought humans shouldn’t be capable of making and hoping none of those noises were coming from her mother. He hadn’t seen Phoebus slobbering on some woman in an alley on Easter, either. “You don’t have to go to the country with them and watch them.” He hadn’t been given a lecture on getting unholy thoughts while watching adults in the middle of courtship. From what she’d seen of Phoebus, she was a lot more worried about her stomach than her brain.  
“Which country?” Quasimodo asked. “I thought he preferred this one.”  
“No, that’s not what I’m talking about. Here,” Gaetan said. She stood up from the table and took his hand, leading him out to the balcony that overlooked the city. “All these houses all smashed up together is the city.” She spread her arms out, gesturing at the city unhappily. She sat on the railing and pointed across it to the rolling hills and the dark purple mountains. “But all the way over there, with the dirt roads and the cows eating grass and the windmills is the country.”  
“Who lives out there?” Quasimodo asked.  
“Farmers, maybe some miners, probably some tanners. I don’t know. I’ve barely seen a tree.”  
“It sounds amazing,” Quasimodo said.  
“Why?”  
“Think about it,” Quasimodo said. “No people. No chores. No crime. No gypsies.” Quasimodo had shared his foster father’s objection to gypsies and the fact that one had tried to kill her wasn’t going to get them on his good side any time soon. Gaetan didn’t care. Women, men, gypsies… there was something wrong with everyone apparently.  
‘One gypsy,’ Gaetan thought to herself.   
“What’s that black stuff?” Quasimodo asked.   
“That’s a forest.”  
“Who’s in there?”  
“No one’s there. I don’t know anyone would go there. I don’t even know why I’m going there.” 

……………….

Esmeralda was unsure what to think of her situation. She had been struck down by a bolt as well, though when was a mystery, possibly to even God the Omniscient himself. She was still wallowing in the pool of intrigue and recognized the symptoms, but misdiagnosed the disease. Of course he was intriguing. Why would he not be? He was a puzzlebox, each new way to poke at him offered a delicious new prize. The only problem was figuring out a few new tricks. She knew how to get his attention and keep it away from anything else around him. She knew how to get funny expressions from him. She knew how to get a horse ride from him and make him give up duty in the process. She even knew how to get secrets out of him. Too bad the gifts she got were all surprises; there was probably some strategy to that game that she hadn’t mastered yet. She wondered what else she could get out of him.  
He wasn’t what she wanted in a relationship, though. She wasn’t sure what she wanted from that, but she was sure that being armed shouldn’t be a requirement. That was not the kind of protection she wanted to use.  
“Are you—Oh, yes, very funny, haha—You are so going to pay for this! Are you alright, Esmeralda?” Clopin asked, careful not to mention Frollo’s name, as he fought a losing war with Prince over his earring.  
“I’m fine,” Esmeralda said.  
“You are a dead man!—I said Let go!” Esmeralda untangled the baby’s fingers from his earring and Clopin pulled Prince out of reach and untangled the baby’s fingers from Esmeralda. “You seem worried,” Clopin said, wrestling his own fingers from Prince.  
In retaliation to everything having been taken away, Prince began to scream.  
“Not this again!” Clopin complained, and tossed his hat to the baby. “Here, hat, your favorite vegetable.”  
Prince set to work to soak the hat in drool.  
“I’m not worried, I’m… wondering something,” Esmeralda answered.  
“Well, if it’s about what to do with Frollo, setting him on fire gets my vote.”  
“But he hasn’t done anything wrong recently!” Esmeralda said.  
“Oh yes he has,” Clopin said, glaring at Prince. His only consolation was that twenty years ago Quasimodo had tried to eat Frollo’s hat. “I just can’t tell you about it.”  
“You mean he—“  
“No, I don’t mean he actually arrested me, I made that up. I asked him to show me how to take care of Prince.”  
“You what?” she screamed.   
“Yes, I want all of France to know about this, as well and parts of England,” Clopin said, smacking his aching ears. “I had no choice and I had no sleep. Besides, how is it different from one day of you putting up with the bastard?” ‘Except Prince was the one pawing at his chest,’ Clopin mused.  
“I’m armed, first off!” Esmeralda exclaimed.  
Clopin took his hat away from Prince and the baby started howling.  
Esmeralda waved her arms, conceding that point to Clopin, who gave the hat back and silenced the child.  
“Esmeralda, I’m worried for your safety.”  
“You shouldn’t be,” she said, crossing her arms.  
“Look, I know you’re an independent woman, but—“  
“No, I mean you shouldn’t be,” she said, almost disappointed. “As in there’s no reason to in the first place.”  
“I don’t think I understand.”  
“He’s a moron.”  
“Are we talking about the same man here?” Clopin asked. “Tall, dark, scary, forgot to tell me that babies will rip shiny objects off your ears?”  
“Clopin, he can’t yell at me, he can’t arrest me, and he can’t hit me. He has to stand around and make polite conversation with me until I ask for presents. He has no idea what to do and I’m surprised he even allowed himself to get into this situation.”  
“He’s capable of making polite conversation?” Clopin asked.   
“Clopin, with me he’s barely capable of any kind of conversation. In fact, he had trouble walking the first day I was with him.”  
“Esmeralda, many men have trouble walking the first day with you. Would you mind not putting these things in my head?”  
“I’m more worried about his head,” Esmeralda said.  
“Yes, that is a good point,” Clopin said, closing his eyes and trying to will away several ideas out of his own. He hadn’t wanted to know what went on in the minister’s mind before, and back then he took comfort in the fact that the man showed no interest in breeding.  
“So far I’ve gotten him to hit it when the wrong idea gets in there,” Esmeralda said. She didn’t want to admit that it was more due to his bad dancing than her quick thinking.   
“Well, tell me if you run out of blunt objects,” Clopin said. “By the way, you still owe me that hammer from the last man you had to chase off.”

………..

Claude was surprised when Esmeralda ran up to him. She told him she couldn’t wait to see what he’d planned and he believed her. In truth, she didn’t want to wait around for hours again for him to build up the nerve.   
The shoes and the dress were almost worth the pins she had suffered. The dress covered more of her arms and shoulders than covering—or even bothering to conceal—her chest. The giant, voluminous sleeves were fun to play with and every movement of her arms sent the fabric flying in ways she could not have predicted and were fun to watch and feel. Her bust was decorated and she wondered why, because in her experience her chest was a show off enough on its own, but she was flattered nonetheless. The shoes matched the red fabric of the dress that seemed to spill everywhere and Esmeralda wondered both what the point of the shoes were if they were just going to be covered and if the women had forgotten to cut her skirt despite the many measurements they’d taken.  
Walking, however, was a whole new lesson all over again. Esmeralda could easily walk in a dress; it was walking in such a big dress that posed a problem. The skirt kept trying to shuffle between her legs or bunch up around one. Her sleeves lost their fun when they got in the way of hiking yards of fabric up around her. Instead of clinging to Frollo because she liked the way his brain wandered away at her touch, she clung to him for balance and support. Considering her first reason, the second wasn’t working well. Eventually her grip migrated to his arm and she managed to acquire a skill at shuffling the skirt ahead of her and around her legs, but her skill was almost as bad as Claude’s skill at dancing. By that time, the two had managed to get two blocks from the shop and Gaetan met up with them.  
Claude nearly swore in relief as Esmeralda took hold of Gaetan’s horse and he excused himself to ready his own horse. Before, embarrassment and the fact that she’d caused him to fall over three times, always on something sharp, he had nearly lost the battle with frustration and some fear of losing her and her secrets and he almost offered to carry her.  
“You have no idea what wearing a dress is like,” Esmeralda told Gaetan as they slowly made their way to the barracks.   
“Yes, whoever invented pants was just jealous and didn’t want to share them,” Gaetan replied.  
“You’re so funny,” Esmeralda said and giggled. “Where did you get such a sense of humor?”  
“I made it myself,” Gaetan muttered. Would this woman go back to talking like random words falling out of a book? Was this really how all women thought guys wanted to be talked to?  
“You’re so cute,” Esmeralda said. “How old are you, eight?”  
Gaetan rolled her eyes. Well, that explained things… she hoped.  
“I am fourteen.” Close enough, right? She could be a very short fourteen year old boy, right?   
“Oh,” Esmeralda said, her mood suddenly changing. Her hand on the horse moved farther from Gaetan. Apparently, when you had more to put in your trousers, you obviously had less to put in your head. Oh yes, haha, you’re a very untelligent toddler who’s so smart to tie his own shoes, but oh no, you say anything after the age of twelve as a male and everything is code for ‘take your blouse off.’  
Gaetan sighed. She wanted to go back to talking to Phoebus about stuff she didn’t actually want to. She’d been ordered to ‘set things right with that man’ and have some sort of talk with him about things neither of them wanted to think about the other doing. It wasn’t fair. She didn’t do anything wrong. At least she hadn’t been given a deadline to finish talking about it.  
“Is it hard to ride a horse?” Esmeralda asked.  
“No, but the ground is,” Gaetan answered.  
They arrived at the barracks finally. Gaetan was relieved when Esmeralda made her way, this time adequately—though nowhere near gracefully—to Frollo. Geatan was starting to see why men like Phoebus had such hard heads: they wouldn’t damage them when they beat them against something.

…………….

 

“Awww,” Esmeralda cooed as she came upon Frollo petting his horse’s neck. Frollo either didn’t hear her, or pretended she hadn’t said anything. The horse, however, did notice her. The destrier stopped stretching and adjusting to have Frollo’s fingers work themselves to the perfect spot and shoved the man back gently. The horse took a step forward, putting itself in between the two humans, and sniffed his friend.   
Claude was still uncomfortable about what he thought of Esmeralda. The thoughts he had of her were intangible longings now, things that confused him and even caused him pain when he tried chase them away. He was haunted by these thoughts. He found himself looking out his window when no one was around to take his mind away and he’d wonder what he was looking for and all that he could think of was her and a sickening shiver went down his spine when he tried to tell himself he should expel her from his life. He was trapped by these thoughts. He didn’t want to be taken over by another person, his mind was his and it was his last refuge from the nasty people in the city, especially gypsies. But any thoughts of fleeing, of chasing her away, of threatening or hurting or even killing her made him feel sick and he felt the very real chance of tears now. He felt he should have gotten rid of her the moment me saw her, and angry at her for somehow convincing him otherwise.  
He couldn’t fend off his own thoughts and he couldn’t argue them into leaving for they were impervious to logic, and deep down these weren’t thoughts that even hinted at ungodliness, which meant God couldn’t help. He was alone in battling these demons and they insisted on tearing at him from every side. She had so much power over him and he hated it. Even more, he was afraid of it. He wanted to run from his own head.  
At the moment he was trying to focus on actually having a nice day with this woman and wanted to pretend she didn’t turn his mind into a chaotic civil war. But pretending didn’t make the feelings go away. Just because he was dealing with the outside, didn’t mean he’d never return to the inside.  
Unlike Claude, horses love feelings. They breathe them, in and out. Friendship was made of happiness and sadness, of nuzzles of appreciation and snorts of pride. The horse wanted only to be friends with Claude. That was enough for him and he tended to be a selfish horse. Everyone else could go find someone else to be friends with, and if they did, their friends were nowhere near as nice as his. But now someone wasn’t just trying to take his friend away, but confuse and terrify the poor human. Well, the horse wasn’t going to let her. She’d been mean to his friend, so he wasn’t go to let her play with him anymore.  
“Here,” Claude said, shoving a chunk of sugar into Esmeralda’s hand. “Hold your hand out flat as possible.  
Esmeralda offered the treat to the horse, but the destrier sniffed her hand and shook its head. It nudged Claude, asking his friend to give it to him.  
Claude took the sugar back and gave it to the horse and petted its neck. ‘Yes,’ he silently told the horse. ‘You don’t have to like her. You’re a good horse. Just put up with her.’  
Claude’s encouragement went too far, though. The horse took another step, trying to keep the two humans apart entirely. Well, he was not about to be outsmarted by his own animals. Claude took the reigns and tied them to the fence. He mounted the horse and turned around to ride side-saddle.   
Esmeralda smiled as Claude offered his hand. “Where are we going?” she asked.  
“Out in the country,” he said. “I own land there and it’s quiet.”  
“But no one’s out there!” Esmeralda cried.  
“You have nothing to worry about. My apprentice will be with us the entire time.”  
“Malarrimo?” Esmeralda asked, looking over at Gaetan.  
“Malarrimo?” Claude echoed, barely pronouncing the word and making a face as if the word put a bad taste in his mouth.  
“It means raven,” Gaetan said, riding her own horse over to the two. What was taking so long?  
‘Dear God, don’t ask me to teach you Spanish,’ Esmeralda thought, trying to keep a straight face. ‘You sound horrible!’  
‘Dear God, don’t ask me to learn me Spanish,’ Claude thought, trying to keep a straight face. ‘Your language sounds horrible!’  
“Surely you trust a boy who once saved your life,” Claude said. ‘Surely you remember nearly blowing your nose on my sleeve, too.’  
Gaetan looked at Esmeralda and wondered what the woman wanted of her. The woman wanted something from her, some answer, but she wasn’t even bothering to ask the question. What was she supposed to do, especially since Esmeralda thought her head worked like Frollo’s?  
Somehow, her puzzlement and silence in trying to ask what the unspoken question was had been the right answer and Esmeralda took Claude’s hand to lead her to the side of the objecting horse and lift her by her shoulders onto the saddle next to him.  
Claude leaned over and untied the reigns. He let the horse shake its head in dislike of being tricked and led it out at a steady trot trough the Paris streets.  
Esmeralda leaned on him and she felt him try to scoot further over on the saddle. What a fun toy, she thought. She’d never been able to scare men, and this one practically came with a string tied to her finger as well. She wanted her ride before she risked breaking her shiny new bauble, though.  
“He must look at you as a new daddy,” she said.  
“Who?” he asked.  
“Malarrimo.”  
“I hope not,” he answered. “I’ll ask him and tell him to stop it if he does.”  
“Weren’t you ever like him when you were his age?” she asked.  
“I was nothing like him when I was his age,” Claude protested. “For one thing I was taller. For another, my hair looked better than that.” ‘And it still does,’ he thought to himself. “Boys these days wear it too long.”  
“I thought it would be rather understandable,” she said. “His daddy just died far, far away.”   
‘Yes, but he also died long, long ago, but that was no reason for me to say I am his father.’ “My father died when I was his age. I didn’t try to have my commander take me in.”  
“What did happen?” she asked.   
“I trained as a soldier, just as he wanted. I took care of my mother before she died two years later. I finished my studies at the university and I continued to serve in the King’s Guard.”  
“You were orphaned at sixteen?”  
“Yes, and I was a free man. I am not like him.”  
“What about his mother?” she asked,  
“What about her?” he asked. What was she trying to imply now? “I don’t even know the woman.”  
“Doesn’t he see her?”  
“No, he lives in my house and is my servant,” he said. “You know, he could be your servant as well, if you want.”  
“What are you implying?”  
“I am implying whatever you want me to imply.” There. He could play games with her head instead. He really didn’t know how to handle such offers anyway. Save for profuse apologies over not knowing what to do, he barely managed more than five sentences with girls. The most progress he ever made was when he was drilled with questions by one girl to which his only answers were ‘I don’t know’ and in the ending she said, ‘You’re very boring, you know that, don’t you?’ to which he answered ‘Yes, I know.’ After that, she talked for hours on end, carrying on the conversation without letting him in.   
“But what if I’m not ready?” No, her toy wasn’t supposed to do this! Give it back! This wasn’t supposed to happen!  
“Then take your time,” he answered. What? Was he supposed to have all the answers? “A man cannot wait forever, though.”  
‘Oh, yes he can,’ she thought. “Can I have my own horse?”  
“Yes, you can once we’re married,” he said. He could handle horses. They stayed outside and he knew how to treat those. “Perhaps after my apprentice masters a few more tricks, he can teach you to ride.”  
‘Darn!’ Well, she could fix that someday…or maybe she wouldn’t have to. “What about Djali?”  
“No, your goat cannot have a horse,” he muttered. Just when she was pleasant to talk to.  
“He’s my dowry,” she said. All her gypsy friends knew, so she had been used to everyone knowing about the goat. “You’re not going to make me get rid of him, are you?”  
“No, but my cook might,” he said. “We can settle all that when you agree to it. In the mean time, there is no need to worry.” Yes, he did say no more kids, but that wasn’t the kind of kids he protested against.   
“You should hold on tight,” he said. Now that the city proper was thinning out, and even more so were the crowds, he sent the horse into a full gallop, to fly over the world and let it all blow away from under him.


	17. Chapter 17

Once, a long time ago, Claude’s father had told him that so long as the boy kept up as a soldier and kept the family in good money, he’d be happy. Claude had been eight at the time and wasn’t skilled enough to train as a soldier for the King’s Guard yet. Claude’s father just asked the boy to grow more every time he tried and failed at his training. His mother said money was good, but picking up nasty, ill-bred habits of low-class men and ignoring studies and ladies would mean none of it would ever matter.  
Claude forgot about what his father had told him until just after his father died. He went to a university. He had learned Latin and reading and writing and scripture and laws. None of it had anything to do with handling a business based trading and selling fancy cloth. He couldn’t even remember what half the colors were called.  
He had asked his mother, but she said she was a lady and ladies knew nothing about any kind of business. He soon sold the business and used the money to purchase land out in the country and several houses in the city. He hoped they were what his mother would consider pretty, but she never cared.  
Still, tenants paid rent and the farmers allowed him to go riding late at night out in the forest in exchange for being able to cut firewood and hunt animals in the winter.  
It hit him now, like the snowy air that still tried to hide from the oncoming summer, that yes all that had been a long time ago, farther off in the past than one of those silly little stories that puppeteer told. The trees had changed; he couldn’t recognize any of them now.  
Well, that was the only thing that had changed. He ruled here.

…………….

 

The horse charged across the cobblestones and in seconds was pounding its way, unstoppable and insatiable in its quest to savor the unbound freedom, across dirt roads and wild grass. The horse could forget about the strange woman and his friend’s worries. He could forget about having to wait for the other humans to move or to watch out for their fragile wooden structures or the painful metal ones. There was nothing but him and the wind.  
Indeed, nothing but him and the wind for Claude as well, and two racing heartbeats. He realized something he had forgotten in planning this excursion. He had thought Esmeralda would lean forward and take hold to the reigns, her hands innocently on his. Instead, she threw her arms around his chest and they kept slipping down to his hips. He tried to alleviate the problem by putting his hand around her shoulders, but suddenly froze when he realized his hand had touched bare skin above her bodice. She said nothing and scooted under his pauldron and leaned her head against his chest, wrapping her arms over his heart and holding onto his other other pauldron. She put his free arm about her waist and he thought that if he just pretended it wasn’t there he’d have no problem.   
For once, it worked. The soothing breeze flying past and their fluttering clothes billowing together like struggling butterflies in a gale calmed him like breathing in some strange new and filled his blood and silenced every nerve in his body. But it all made him more aware of his heart, pounding against his chest like the hooves of his horse against the cold earth. It fluttered against its cage bars, struggling to flee from another heart that it was echoing. He could feel hers right next to him. Nothing but her heart, and still it frightened him. There was nowhere to run from her, and never would be. There was no release from this torture, for surely she’d follow him to hell as well as drag him down there with fiery chains of sorrow and longing. He’d burn for her and now knew he’d fall into that pit willingly for her. He was cursed to his desire, this heat that swept through him and he craved the fire every time it left.   
He wondered why, despite the prison she’d put him in, he enjoyed the closeness. Why was it so lulling listening to just her heart, drowning out the flapping of sleeves and skirts? Why did he swear he could feel her hands upon him and wish they’d never move? Why was such a ride, one he used to love losing himself in, feeling himself flying over the world like a duteous angel, only adding to the exhilaration of sitting next to her, feeling her soft hair flying over his bare neck?  
Why did she have to be a gypsy? Why did he so desperately feel he had to keep her about, to fear losing her as a companion when he’d never wanted one in the first place? Why could she control him like this? Why, after all this time, all this planning, all these years, was he no longer in charge? He needed to be in charge. He needed him to be in charge. People needed him to be in charge. He would be in charge someday, though, wouldn’t he? He was in charge of everything else and nothing could go wrong. It was onnly a matter of time… he would be safe. Safe from her, safe from hell, and everyone else would be safe from everything.

……………………….

The horse found its way into the forest and leapt about over creeks and brooks, stomping on twigs maliciously, chasing down small animals from bushes, the forest was enough fun to allow the strange woman around. His friend did like her anyway, and he wasn’t forgetting about him. As long as she remembered who as in charge and as long as those rabbits and birds fluttered away in terror, he could put up with her.   
At last the horse’s energy was spent. He wanted to relax amongst the trees and let the critters scamper back before he had one more romp and went home to muse about the day’s frolics. He settled down to drink from a small stream and do his best to keep an eye on the two humans.   
Claude took his hand away and worried at why he was disappointed when she took her own hands away. He was torn from listening to the sound of Gaetan catching up with them while keeping her distance by Esmeralda tapping on his pauldrons.  
He turned around and she pushed his hat into his hands, as if she was worried they had nothing to do.  
“Oh, yes, thank you,” he said, gently taking his hat back, careful to avoid her fingers as they rested like spiders, trying to blend in with the black and purple fabric, ready to spring if they noticed the slightest sudden movement.  
He had barely put his hat back on his head when she attacked. He was taken totally by surprise. He never saw it coming. Just as his hands slid away, he was suddenly blind, seeing nothing but black hair and he as struck dumb, his mouth covered by hers. Every part of him was frozen, save for his flailing hands, wondering what to do while the rest of him wondered what was happening as her tongue poked it’s way past his teeth into his mouth.  
Esmeralda had found a new sport with her toy. Who knew hunting could be so enjoyable? She was the predator, stalking him, walking in his shadow, prickling with excitement as his fear picked up just when it was too late. She had him cornered and he was too weak to fight back, but his struggles and submissive surrender, his silent begging for mercy set her blood aflame. She took his hands and threw them behind her and he held on as if he were drowning. He whimpered, a scared and frightened vermin under her bestial heel. She put her hands to his cheeks and pressed hard against his face. He wasn’t going to get away. His wings were crushed, his legs broken, and all that was left was the mystery of what he’d do next with no way out.  
She got her answer as he stopped resisting and pushed back, tentatively reciprocating her ravenous kiss. His hands crawled up to her shoulders and cupped the soft skin over the perfectly rounded bones. He still persevered to keep a space between their chests, refusing to let either of them press against the other as their hearts pounded against each other, trying to smash their way out, but he lost even that battle and gave in, clinging tighter. The fear, the willingness to give in, the way he followed her like the rainbow of colors after the sun as it sank down below, dragging the world into darkness, was what made her keep going, what made her never wish to stop her game with her new toy. She was never giving this up. No one was taking this away from her. No one else could ever play with him.  
At last he finally had what he wanted, a moment where all the pain of his prison was washed away, drowned out by a flood he could not anticipate, but kept looking for. He had no idea what he wanted to do to her. He knew he wanted to tackle her, land on her and have her, but he also knew he wanted her to enjoy it. His thoughts not only wouldn’t tell him what he was actually thinking, but didn’t even make the remotest logical sense. But logic had been killed in the rain, a sacrifice to God who had only saved his desire and happiness, floating away under the guidance of His Great Hand, wondering what the beautiful rainbow would be like, a promise he’d never know his undeterminable fear again.  
But God is not a god of peace. God would not let Claude rest just yet. His Israeal was to be torn apart, his temple destroyed, and his thoughts cast out to wander. His great tower of happiness in unity was smashed down and destroyed as a scream tore through its way to their ears so violently, it had to have left jagged scars in the forest air.  
Claude pushed her away like a nightmare. His grip on her changed and he clung to her arm, his fingers stabbing her through the cloth. He ignored her screams and quietly rode his horse into the direction of the scream.  
Even from where he was he could already see the signs of battle. He rode closer and the tiny battlefield unfolded like a vulture’s wing in front of him. Some sort of story was written in blood on the forest floor, notes scribbled in the margins on bushes. Gaetan’s horse had been slashed across the neck before it could make a noise. Two dead gypsy men lay on the ground, slashed in the gut and the neck, adding to the blood, which was spread out like a tattered blanket: smeared all over the ground, splatters decorating nearby shrubs, a bloody hand print swiped across a tree, the red painting a trail downward to another gypsy pinned by the throat with Gaetan’s dagger. Bits of clothing lay everywhere in tatters. It was obvious there had been many attackers and they, perhaps Gaetan as well, had added to the blood, but that was a mystery, as was everything else.  
Except for who had been there to lead them here and give them the signal.   
Esmeralda was crying. She should be, he wasn’t going to let her go even if she tried to tear her arm off to do so. His grip tightened, no doubt drawing blood under her sleeve and he took out his dagger. “There is no such thing as an innocent gypsy!” he yelled, holding the blade ready to drive it down onto her svelte neck.  
Before he could condemn her further, she threw herself against him, seeking support as she wept.  
His arm faltered. He’d seen gypsies cry before. They had begged for mercy, kissed his feet, cried in pain. But no gypsy had even cried on him, pressed against his shoulder for comfort, sharing grief and fear with him as he held his down in his gut to turn it into anger and violence later. He had no idea what to do. This wasn’t supposed to happen. This couldn’t possibly happen. Something was wrong; something was broken with the world. But he could feel the hot water soaking through his clothes. He could feel and see her shaking there. He could hear every sob. He couldn’t dare trust her, he couldn’t dare believe her. What strange thoughts he felt meant nothing in this situation and still he was torn.  
He looked back out at the empty scene of the massacre, looking and listening for something that could lead him away, a scent he could follow, a bent twig pointing the way, anything.   
Esmeralda suddenly perked up, terrified out of her crying by something worse than his threats. “It’s a trap!” she whispered.  
Furious that she had noticed something he missed, he threw the horse into a mad gallop. She grabbed onto him as they fled, her eyes wide in shock as she looked back to see a swarm of arrows fly out from the trees at them. She shrieked as one landed in her dress, lodging deep into the horse’s flank. Claude pushed the horse to go faster and the destrier smashed over the crops and destroyed tools left out as it charged back to Paris. There were other casualties: several chickens and their coop, most of a fence, and several carts and stands as the city flew into view and not soon enough.  
Claude leapt off the horse with Esmeralda and left it to destroy the rest of Paris for all he cared.  
“You’re hurting me!” Esmeralda screamed time and again as he ran down three streets and two alleys to his house and dragged her up the stairs.   
“No, I’m not!” he finally yelled back and threw her into his bedroom and locked her in the room from the outside. “And don’t you dare break anything!”

……………

The fact that Claude’s horse had attacked his puppet stand in a blind rage was going to be the least of Clopin’s problems.  
Half the gypsies in the underground lair had gone mad, terrifying and threatening the other half with weapons screams of ‘Dios lo quiere!’ Despite having had to step in and stop five fights, three of which ended in him killing the ringleader of the quarrel and then having to deal with a sister or wife screaming at him, Clopin was more worried about the noise giving away where they were to the soldiers on the streets. Thankfully, the rowdy faction gathered some sense and even people from their own sides, men and women, came to beat their own drunken fanatics back.   
They may have given up on fights and even stealing from those who they claimed were ‘loyalist enemies’ but they had turned their attention on him and chased him up on his gibbet, creating a human barricade to keep him from leaving.   
“Dios lo quiere!” they chanted, then burst into laughter.  
“Dios lo quiere silencio!” Clopin screamed back at them. “What is so funny?”  
They only laughed louder. Their screams were broke up now, starting from far off from one of the entrances to the Court of Miracles. “Victoria!” they shouted, and Clopin wished he could see what they were screaming about—if there was a reason—but the crowd pressed closer and he prepared for another fight. “Tenemos el Diablo!” the crowd shouted and they parted, shoving someone through their frenzy onto the floor of the gibbet.  
Clopin froze. A fight would have been better. He could have handled a fight. There were only, what, a couple thousand of them and one of him. Easy. At least, easier than this. Lying stage floor, unable to stand up due to the rope bonds around his arms and legs, was Frollo’s apprentice, a psychotic whacko-in-training shivering in fear.  
Someone picked the boy up and threw him into Clopin’s arms. “We did what the great king of all gypsies couldn’t do!” he boasted.   
“That’s because dead people aren’t stupid enough to do what you did!” he yelled. The crowd went silent. Part of the human barricade backed away. They hadn’t expected him to try and correct them. They had expected some sort of humiliation followed by an act of surrender. Most revolutions were never very well planned, and so are just jotted off in the history books as a bunch of crazy people. This was going to be one of them. “Frollo’s the crazy one, not us! Now what’s he going to do? Any of you think of that? No one? Two thousand people can’t come up with a bright idea to keep from getting killed?”  
“He got away!” someone in the back screamed.  
“Oh, that’s even better! You pissed him off and took his apprentice! What exactly am I supposed to do with the boy? And don’t any of you suggest killing him!”  
They did anyway. What could he do, call the police? Frollo was the police.  
Clopin looked down at the boy. His arms were tied behind his back and Clopin’s hands nearly touched, holding onto the kid’s sides. No screaming, no crying, just watching everything and looking like a baby bird that had fallen into a next of cats.  
The entire court began to scream. Four thousand people and not a smart thought between them. Prince was brighter than them and he had swallowed two of Clopin’s earrings. Two thousand people and they choose the stupidest thing to do against the cruelest man in history. Two thousand other people and they choose now to gain a backbone and it wasn’t even much of one.  
If only Esmeralda were here, she’d think of—oh dear.  
“Any of you consider the fact that Esmeralda’s out there?” he yelled. Those who weren’t still trying to cling to their anger looked confused. How stupid were his people? “Esmeralda’s out there risking her life just to keep that damned man away from all of us, just to keep us safe! Any of you idiots think about what that poor girl must be going—“ Clopin’s head ran head long into the sudden knowledge of what his hands were on. “Oh my God, I am so sorry!” he screamed, shoving the not-so-boy away at arms length. His brain stopped trying to pick up the pieces of the disaster and checked up on what his mouth had just done. “Wait!” he shouted to the crowd. “This might still work!”  
The half of the crowd that hated him didn’t like him stealing their idea. The crowd that looked to him to make the situation go away wondered why he had changed sides.  
“He’s a girl!” Clopin yelled. “She’s not a boy!” he tried to correct himself. Well, they got the idea. If they were half as smart as he used to think they were. “We’ve got some secret on Frollo, finally! We trade him his girl for ours and keep him away by threatening to tell all of Paris about her!”  
Both crowds cheered and he bowed. Yes, he solved their stupid, petty, moronic, cowardly problem. Everyone could get back to their lives, only with a bit less running for them soon. He couldn’t just hold onto her forever, though. “Throw her in the jail!” he proclaimed happily. Who would have thought that all his people’s problems could be solved by a tiny, scrawny little blonde with bad hair--?  
…wait…  
“What’s her name?” he turned and asked someone. “And get off my stage! Get! Go!” he screamed, chasing the people off the gibbet with his dagger. “Someone tell me the boy’s name, and don’t give me that ‘Malarrimo’ garbage!”  
“Chiot!” someone yelled proudly. Hooray, he’d found a bilingual idiot.  
“We’ll figure that out later,” he said, and carried her down from the gibbet.   
No wonder he couldn’t find her. No one would ever think to look for a ‘Sweet, adorable little girl’ in a rock-throwing, reticent little boy guarded by a man who might as well be Devil himself were it not for the fact that devil could make himself look attractive now and then. He was sure the girl couldn’t have acquired all her traits, even if she had been spending months with the nasty minister, from him. He was going to have to tell Giselle to be a bit more accurate about describing her kids after this.  
Well, that was two messes solved at least. No more Frollo to worry about, Esmeralda can forget about him like all the other creeps she ever dated, and wouldn’t Giselle be happy to see her daughter again? Things were finally looking up. Problems were almost solving themselves. So much, in fact, that they ended up amounting to three instead of two, considering that now the gypsies would be left alone. These idiots were contagious.  
Well, the important thing was that he’d proven he was still in charge. Nothing could go wrong now.

………….

Esmeralda’s first thought was to escape out the window, but when she looked out, there was an old woman screaming at her beneath it. Apparently, Frollo had alerted his cook to the situation and not to her.  
She turned to the room wondered what to do. She contemplated actually defying him and breaking something, but decided against that. For once he didn’t deserve to be punished. If anyone deserved it, she did. She had gotten the poor little boy killed. Of course he’d be angry. Her people had always banded together. One person’s problem with him became everyone’s problem. His problem with one of them became his problem with everyone of them. She was lucky to be alive and unharmed.  
She had nothing to do now, nothing to drive her boredom away, no Djali, no tambourine, and no toys, human or not. Eventually she began going through his things, wondering what he did to stave off boredom, naughty or not.   
She began going through everything of his she could, shoving it all back haphazardly afterwards. Whatever he did in his spare time, he didn’t do it in his bedroom as far aw she could see. The shelves were full of books, but only one of them had any pictures in it. They were all full of scribbles and little symbols, some of them not even French letters. How could anyone have so many books that were obviously so boring and meaningless?  
He seemed to be writing his own book and left pieces about in and on top of drawers. She couldn’t make out his dainty, frilly writing either and what pictures he did draw were very bad, nothing but a bunch of circles and lines and arrows. He should take classes.   
The rest of his room was a bit more amusing, though nothing to hold her interest for long. His clothes were folded neatly, even his socks for some reason. Who in the world folded their socks? Or made someone else fold their socks for them?  
Nothing fun in his clothes unless she wanted to try on his dresses. Maybe later. Besides, they might not fit over her chest. That and she didn’t know when he was coming back. Dressing in his clothes would be a bit hard to explain, especially when she wasn’t sure how much danger she was already in.  
As much as everyone had joked about his underwear, going through it now was just throwing piles of cloth about. There was no real fun in it and she wondered why as she tossed it back into the drawers.  
She abandoned his clothes and turned to the bed. She hadn’t really realized it was there. It was gigantic, but she had thought it was part of the wall at first, the dark wood and black velvet just one huge, looming shadow. The posts of the canopy were almost twenty feet high, and she wondered why one skinny man would need a bed so big. She shoved the velvet curtain away and crawled onto the mattress. It was also velvet, and stuffed with flowers and feathers. For someone who was so meticulous about where he left things and how every single article of clothing was neatly folded into the drawers, his bed was a mess. Blankets were left everywhere, pillows were strewn about. It looked like someone had tried to make a fort and gave up after getting tangled in the many blankets. That sounded like a good idea. She should remember that. Meanwhile, the feathers were fluffier than the straw she was used to and sinking into the bed, covered in pillows, and attacked by pillows as she bounced up and down on it was amusing for a few minutes.   
She crawled out of the bed, leaving it more of a mess than before just in time. Or maybe it didn’t matter.  
She froze as she heard the door unlock. He was coming back. He was going to be so angry about the attack. He was going to punish her, she knew it. He’d blame her along with every single other gypsy, whoever it was who was responsible for this. He’d kill her. Or maybe there was a reason she’d been locked in his bedroom.   
Shaking, she waited for him to enter the room. She was forced to keep waiting, to keep wondering what her punishment and fate would be. A hand and a bit of his sleeve poked in and tossed her old clothes and a bit of bread through the barely open door, then disappeared before it slammed shut and locked again.  
The thought of him bringing her stuff made her feel worse. She hadn’t just lost her freedom, possibly her life. A long time ago, those would be all she cared about losing. But now she’d found something so much more fulfilling than just surviving and not being walled in. He wasn’t just a toy, he was her toy, her best toy, the greatest toy she could ever find. He was a thrilling toy, a toy she never wanted to lose, one that no replacement could truly match. Now she’d never get to play with him again. No more flowers, no more dresses she couldn’t walk in, no more rides… no more feeling that racing, scared heartbeat under her hand and seeing him beg her to promise she’d never hurt him and that his fear was just a dream, a nightmare only she could chase away.  
She stared at her old clothes and then looked down at her new dress. A giant slit stretched all the way down from the top of her thigh all the way down her train until it had sliced her skirt into two uneven halves. The arrow had never been taken off the horse in the panic. The horse was gone. Her dress was ruined. Any chance to get anything else ever again had been killed. Everything she ever had in her life had been taken away from her. She didn’t even have Djali to keep her company. Someone took everything away from her in one moment of betrayal and it stung her more than ever because it was one of her own.  
If she wasn’t going to have this life, she better stop pretending, she decided. She took off her red dress and changed into her old clothes. Looking for a place to put the gift she’d never appreciated and would never be able to appreciate later, she noticed something she hadn’t before. Tucked away in a corner were a few more black blankets, neatly folded. Walking over to them, she noticed they’d been turned into a makeshift pallet. Next to it was a tiny set of things that matched Frollo’s: folded clothes, including underwear, a few bits of paper, practice scribbles from someone trying to write, a small bag of money…  
Esmeralda didn’t feel like touching any of it. Everything she’d lost, little Malarrimo had lost too. No freedom, no safety, no chance to survive. But he was a boy. Surely whatever was going to happen to him couldn’t be anywhere near as threatening as what was in store for her. She was a woman. There were so many more things just one man could do to her.  
She sat on the floor, not wanting to touch the bread, sick to her stomach at the thoughts of what either side in this fight was capable of. 

……………….

“You!” Claude yelled at the first soldier he found. No wonder no one was being arrested. None of his men were about on the streets, and those who were, were exchanging stupid jokes with civilians. The soldier panicked and whoever he was talking to ran inside and slammed the door closed. ‘They’d better be afraid,’ Claude thought. He didn’t know what he was going to do if anyone acted up within reach, but he was going to make them regret even thinking of goofing off on duty after this. “My horse has been attacked. I don’t know where he is and I don’t care. Find him and get someone to tend to him. Tell your captain I want to see him two seconds ago!” he yelled.   
Claude watched the man run off, so scared he tripped and nearly fell on his polearm more than once as he ran down the street. If this was what his soldiers were like, what was the captain like? Probably glued to someone’s wife at the moment. Gypsies everywhere, soldiers that could easily be replaced by incontinent pigeons, his captain was never anywhere he should be, he wasn’t just disrespected but people tried to murder him on his own property and then abducting and murdering children, what kind of city had Paris become? What kind of wretched, immoral, uncouth people had everyone become? When did they all turn English?  
‘Finally!’ Claude thought in exasperation as he heard hoofbeats.   
“Sir, I—“ Phoebus started, but was cut off as Claude grabbed by the shoulders and pulled him towards him, almost off the horse.   
“I don’t care!” Claude muttered through gritted teeth. “I am not going to dumb this down or repeat myself. I want my exact orders carried out the very second I am finished and I do not care what else happens. I do not care what you think, I do not care if the plague returns, I do not care if someone or something is on fire. Do you understand?”  
“Yes…” Phoebus answered. He was pretty sure something worse than all that was happening already and he’d missed it on the other side of the city, trying to help people who’d been injured by a spooked horse the size of a house. What could be worse than an animal smashing up half the city?  
“Gaetan has been kidnapped and I was attacked by gypsies. I want every single solider patrolling this city, but they are not to arrest anyone without proof. You are to go into the forest in the northeast and see what you can find.”  
“Sir?” Phoebus ventured.  
“This had better be good!” Phoebus wondered if the man was hurting himself gritting his teeth that fiercely.  
“You have no idea what to do, do you?”  
“I at least have the sense not to go saying that loud enough for any spies to hear me,” Claude whispered.  
“Yes sir, I hadn’t thought of that sir!” Phoebus yelled.  
“Any other thoughts in that head of yours can wait until you come back,” Claude said. He dropped Phoebus, who landed on the street, his feet tangled in the stirrups, and left.  
“This is why people take up drinking,” Phoebus mumbled into the cobblestones. If only it actually worked instead of making his head hurt worse. After he came back and reported to Frollo, he was going to ask what would make him black out for a week and wake up not remembering the last half year of his life.


	18. Chapter 18

Gaetan wondered why she hadn’t been killed. Obviously, they had wanted to. Something was holding them back and she hated it.  
Frollo had been right all along. The Court of Miracles did exist. It really was the worst of all demons to be told of. More people than she ever thought existed were gathered here, wherever it was. They had dragged her here with a sack over her head and held her up in front of a crowd tied up and with her clothes shredded. Still bound by ropes, she’d been thrown in a cell far tinier than her mother’s room. There was nothing between her and them but thick, solid bars. There was nothing to shield her from the images of them and their bonfires, their heathen cheers and celebration. Nothing to stop them from turning to her and throwing something at her or kicking her. Nothing to keep away the jeers and yells or the beer dumped on her by someone who refused to guard her.  
No one would ever come to save her. She was on her own. She’d always be on her own. Every hand she thought reached out to her was something else, someone to step on or someone turning away. She was a thing to everyone. She was something that didn’t make enough money, something that magically kept the floors clean and put the laundry away and made sure Phoebus was yelled at or that he didn’t look like an idiot talking to his horse.  
The only person to whom she wasn’t just a thing was Quasimodo. But he lived up in the bell tower of the cathedral. Even if he came, even if anyone came, what could they do? What would they think? She really was just a kid to be pulled out of messes. She was too much trouble. She was stupid, useless, a burden, too much to ever bother with again.  
She was here to rot, or she’d be thrown back out on the streets die, probably to run away to another part of Paris altogether to avoid everyone who hated her first.   
It really was a lost part of Hell here. They weren’t even kind enough to kill her. It was all because of that devil-king of theirs.

…………

Claude had been hoping to avoid confrontation with Esmeralda after all of this. He wanted to avoid a lot of things. But that wasn’t his job. His job was to deal with everything immediately, to fix everyone’s problems so they could go back to their lives and cause more problems.   
Anything he felt didn’t matter. It never mattered. His mother had tried to teach him that the last days she was alive. She’d been her own self, acting as if his father had never existed, as if her life just went on and the only thing that had changed was the name of the day. Then, after two years of living, of sending her son to be a learned man and depending on him as the head of the family, she gave up. She fell into depression. She never ate, she barely slept, and after two days she was dead. Her problems didn’t matter. She had an inept son and she had to make sure he grew into a man, or the closest thing to it. She didn’t care where the money came from. She might not have even batted an eye if he bought the whorehouse. So long as he watched the family, so long as he studied, so long as he trained, so long as he was a good Christian, it was the best she’d ever manage with him. Only then could she have her own personal problems.   
Taking a deep breath, he unlocked the door and pushed it open. He made sure to lock the door and slip the string the key was on back over his neck and tuck it into his gown before even looking at her.  
She was sitting on the floor in her old outfit, staring at his illustrated bible. It had been a present his father gave to his mother on their wedding night. Claude hadn’t opened it since her death.  
“Would you like to say goodbye to Snowball?” he asked. This woman had put her sly little fingers in too many of his personal things. She was defiling his mother’s book, she had killed his innocent horse, she took his apprentice, and she had stabbed him in the chest and constricted that beautiful hand around his heart and pierced it, leaving him to a lingering death of pain and remorse. But none of that mattered now. It couldn’t. Not now and probably not ever.   
“Who?” she asked from her position on the floor. She didn’t look at him. She was looking at the space between them, wondering why it was there.  
“My horse. His leg was too far injured when anyone could catch up with him.”  
She shook her head.  
He stood where he was. Just because he couldn’t care about his own problems didn’t mean he had to go and try picking up new ones or make his own worse.  
She stood up and walked over to him. Great, he was being chased around his own bedroom. “I’m sorry,” she said, placing her hand gently on his arm.   
“I know,” he said in mild anger. “That would be my problem.”  
She took her hand away. “I don’t understand.”  
“I didn’t think you would.” Well, at least there was no more need for propriety around her and he could speak his mind… whatever it was. “But you’ve forced me to do something I never thought I’d ever be able to do and I still doubt it: I need to trust a gypsy.” He grabbed her wrists to keep her from running away. He wanted her afraid of him. He had lost too much already, he was not going to lose the fear of the one gypsy he still had some control over. “You are going to stay here and you are not going to cause further problems. So long as I have you, I have something to bargain with to get my apprentice back alive. I am issuing an edict tonight if he is not returned: what they do to him I do to you. You are perfectly safe here and I am willing to accommodate, but if you leave here, I will consider this truce over and I will consider you guilty and I will issue a death sentence for any gypsy found in this city. Do I have your word?”  
Esmeralda nodded, swallowing uncomfortably. “I promise.”  
He released her wrists. He wanted nothing more to do with her. She was a hostage and that was all she should be until this was over. “If you need anything, knock on the door. I can show you the washroom and the facilities are outside. I am not going to follow you, but you had better return. If there is nothing you need, I will be going.”  
“What about Djali?” she asked.  
“He is currently eating my neighbor’s garbage.” He really wanted to leave. It was over. ‘It’ should never have existed in the first place. ‘It’ had to be killed and he wanted the peace and quiet to try and trample it to death. “He can’t be in here; he’d eat the entire room.”  
“Then will you stay with me?” she asked.  
Why was it every time he tried to walk away she pulled at him? Why, even now, was she trying to strangle him with her wicked skein? “Damn you, woman!” he screamed, raising a hand to strike her and grabbing her wrist again as she tried to flee. “Why can’t you leave me alone?” Instead of hitting her, he dropped his hand and released her wrist. “If only you’d asked I would have given you all of Paris and hung myself like Judas! If only you asked! If only you wanted! But why can’t you have pity? Why can’t you release me of this spell? Why can’t I have peace? Why—“  
Esmeralda silenced him the best way she knew how. She may be trapped, but he was even more so. Her toy was crying out to be played with, wanting her to marvel at it, demanding for her to answer to her pangs of boredom and sorrow. One word and she’d have anything she wanted from him, well she wanted him and he’d give it to her. She grabbed him and slammed him against the nearest wall and kissed him, devouring his mouth in a rabid, unquenchable ambush. Her toy was not leaving her even if she had to put him on a leash. She violently grabbed his arms and pinned them to the wall at his sides. He gave in, like a swimmer letting themself drown, giving up on trying to overpower the waves. This self-destruction was too tempting, too blinding, too perfect to fight. His hands squirmed as hers began to smother them, and he didn’t notice as those fleshy manacles flexed and twitched, slowly pulling up the skirt of his gown.  
Or perhaps it was she who didn’t notice. She pulled away, just for a second, as she pressed against him. She breathed huskily on his neck and turned back to his face and stopped. She dropped the folds of fabric she’d gathered up in her fingers and pulled back.  
He had turned his head away, forcing his eyes closed as if in pain, his teeth gritted, prepared for torture. He lunged at the opportunity to drive her away, to at least have the chance to retrieve his own breath back as his own. He kicked her off and she hit the back of his canopy bed.   
“Stop tormenting me!” he screamed. She was after his soul. What more perfect time to take it from him than now? Who would believe him that it was her fault? What could he do to defend himself while in the same room? What choice did he have but to still answer to her wants, only to be wrapped up in her spiderweb and to be sucked dry?  
He was already spent. Too much had happened today. He had no more energy to fight, nothing but the light flash of a fire of rage or fear to fight anything off, but not her, not one of her people who wanted him dead. He slumped forward, catching himself on a nearby bookcase. “Do you have any idea what madness it is to want you and have no choice but to run when there is no way out? Do you know how it feels to be powerless under a stranger, an enemy, and know that no matter what you do, every prayer you say to be set free of such pain goes unheard? Do you understand that I hate what you do to me, and yet I want you even more each time we meet?” His hand slipped down the bookcase, slick with sweat and most of the nerves were numb under the stress. He couldn’t catch himself and he slowly fell to his knees. He couldn’t even talk anymore. He was too tired. He was too vulnerable. He should have left before any of this happened.  
He shivered and his hand fell away from his only support, for he was didn’t even have the energy for that. He tumbled forward and wept, shuddering at how weak and disgusting he must look to her. He barely noticed as his head softly fell into her lap. He didn’t move, save for his shaking sobs, as she put her hands on his head.   
He only gave a silent thanks to her and The Lord that she said nothing as the world disappeared and he was lost, finally drowning in his tortured thoughts. 

………………

Frollo rolled over. He hadn’t slept well. His head was pounding. If God had gone to the trouble of inventing sleep, why didn’t it always work? How in the world did one fail at sleep?  
Dawn was poking through his window and the hot rays were playing on his face. The sun could get in line behind everyone else who wanted to push him around. Why was the sun up and he wasn’t?  
“Gaetan, get up,” he mumbled. Something was clinging to his arm and he didn’t allow nonhuman pets inside. Whoever was next to him wasn’t getting up, but instead was poking his face, running a finger along whatever they thought were lines to trace and then started playing with his hair. That wasn’t Gaetan. Waking up and having no apprentice wasn’t a good thing. It was worse that he was waking up next to someone else. He had better wake up before things got worse. At least awake he could yell at them.  
“Oh, it’s you,” he said, pushing Esmeralda’s hand away. Why was she petting him? Children were pets, not him.  
He sat up and shoved himself away from her. He didn’t want to be near her. He didn’t want to have to be here but last night had not gone anywhere near the way he needed it to go. What had happened and why? The whole world was going crazy and now he was going crazy with it. He knew someday Paris would all go to hell, but he hadn’t planned to let it take him with it.  
“Here,” Esmeralda said, handing him his key on its string. “I had to use the…um…”  
“Facilities, yes,” he finished for her. He snatched the key away from her and stood up. He was going to keep some control in this situation, even if it was all pretend. Well, she wasn’t running away, that was good. Right? Now he didn’t have to kill her. Or would that be easier? Why didn’t he know? He was supposed to know. It was his job to know.  
Phoebus had been right. He had no idea what to do. Not about Gaetan, not about Esmeralda, not about courting, not about the captain. Everything was falling apart.   
Phoebus wasn’t really the find-clues type, he was the go-there-put-weapon-in-that-guy-do-what-I-say type. It turned out not to matter. Going over the forest, he had found more shreds of Gaetan’s clothes, her sword and retrieved her dagger from the corpse, and another two dead gypsies, a man who had managed to wander about before dying of a punctured lung and internal bleeding and another who had been kicked away by the horse and Claude must have had his back to before he had to flee. The footprints had disappeared, dogs couldn’t keep the trail, and the gypsies had disappeared entirely from Paris yet again.   
Claude walked over to the window and stared out at Paris. From his vantage point, the only thing that had changed was his cook was using Esmeralda’s goat as a replacement for a trash heap, throwing everything from old food scraps to worn-out brushes, but angrily learning not to use it as a dishwasher. He’d looked out his window many times, looking for some clue for the sunlight to hit and show him answers. Sometimes there were alleys he’d forgotten, sometimes he’d come up with a new threat, sometimes he’d remember a line or law he wondered why he’d forgotten it. There were no answers now. This must be what his mother saw in her last days of living: nothing but an empty city. No answers, no people real enough to care about, just seeing what was lost forever.   
“Fine, don’t say ‘Good Morning,’” Esmeralda complained.  
“I wouldn’t anyway,” he said. “It isn’t one.”  
“You’re really worried about him, aren’t you?” she asked, walking over to the window and standing next to him.  
“Be over there,” he demanded, shoving her away. At least he could keep her from touching him again. He hoped. “It is not her welfare I am concerned with.” At least not now. He could ignore that for a while at least.  
“Her?” she asked.  
He sighed. “Right, The Devil take it all,” he said to himself before addressing her. “Well, you’re not going anywhere and you seem to have a good head about what not to say. The fact is Gaetan is not a boy.”  
“Who?”  
“Do I have to write people’s names on their shirts? Gaetan, blonde, little, works for me. You called him ‘moriremos’ or something.”  
Esmeralda looked shocked, as if she had just been told she swallowed poison.  
“What?” Was there some other kid following him around, or did she just hate Gaetan behind his back? Did she know something about the girl’s fate he didn’t?  
“You just said ‘We die,’” she explained. “Not ‘Malarrimo.’” Not that ‘malarrimo’ was so much more cheerful.  
“Oh.” No wonder he had heard that word before. “Well, that’s not his name… her—look, would you just follow what I’m saying if I say Gaetan?”  
She nodded.   
“Gaetan is not a boy. Gaetan is a little girl. She…well, I’m not very clear on how it works. I never asked.”  
“Oh,” she said, as if she had just been told the answer to life, the universe and everything was 42. So much of the past few months was suddenly a lot clearer, but also a lot more anticlimactic.   
“What?” Did he miss something?  
“I just thought… he… she… let’s just say he looked me in the eyes a bit too soon. I mean she—“  
“Whichever,” he said. Girl, boy… it didn’t matter until someone did something to them that was against the law, and he never liked hearing about those things anyway. “The important thing is that you understand what this means, concerning my reputation.”  
“You’re kinky?” she asked. She didn’t think that; he’d had his eye on her so much he nearly tripped on the ‘boy’ once.  
“I don’t even know what that means, but I am very sure our minds are going in opposite directions,” he said, burying his face in his hands. Maybe he should have Phoebus explain this to her, at least the captain understood the danger. “Dressing up like a man and having a job where she orders them around and has weapons is not something people appreciate women doing, shall we say. Are we on the same page?” ‘Are we even in the same library?’ Claude thought. If he said ‘blue’ she’d ask ‘how high?’ He was sure that if he stood on the Place de Grave platform and asked ‘Raise your hand if you’re paying attention’ to everyone in the city, half the people would turn to their neighbor and ask ‘Who’s that man up there and who’s he talking to?’ and the other half would shrug in response and say they were only here because everyone else was.  
“So what happens if they find out?” Esmeralda asked.  
Claude took his hand away and made a gesture as if angrily trying to pray that she’d stay on the same subject for at least a minute more. He seemingly gave up on hoping and leaned against the window, preferring to watch his own reflection than watch her or the city. “I’m made a mockery of and probably lose my job. The girl goes back on the streets and she has even less of a chance of getting by in the world than before. She’ll probably die in a ditch and if I lose enough face, I’ll curl up and join her.”  
Esmeralda moved closer and put a hand on his shoulder, hoping to comfort him, but he angrily pushed her away. “Stop doing that!” he yelled. “No wonder there are so many of you!”  
“What are you going to do to me?” she asked, moving further away and sulking. She had played with her toy too hard and it was broken, ruined, and now the pieces hurt her when she tried to get it to work again.  
“If anyone knows that, I’d say it’s you,” he said. “You’re the one who’d know what your heathen friends will do. But if you keep that up, you’re going be thinking about it Palace of Justice.”  
“I don’t understand what I did wrong,” she said. Maybe she could fix her toy. He had been enjoying it all before, so what went wrong? He was like a cat hiding under a chair after you stepped on its tail. Couldn’t she just pet him and tell him he was pretty and that she was sorry and it would never happen again? Wouldn’t that solve everything?  
“You wouldn’t,” he said angrily. “You people like taking things away and then claiming it’s yours.”  
“Take what?” she asked. Did he think she was looking for his pockets so she could rob him?  
“You were after my very soul! You were out to ruin me, to damn me to Hell, to send me to an eternity of flames!” he yelled. He backed away before waving his hands at her. He was determined not to even accidentally touch her now. “What you were trying to do is a sin for which there is no salvation! Send yourself to Hell for all I care, but leave me out of it. Doing such a thing is forbidden outside the sacrament of marriage! God has given me enough hardships thanks to your people; I will not lose him entirely because of your hellish games!”  
He stomped over to the door and took the key out form his gown. He was leaving. He should have left long ago.  
“I’m sorry; I didn’t know.” It was all she could think to say. And all this time she was worried about her own safety in that way. Well, not about God, but close enough. He had crosses and crucifixes everywhere. They were on the tassels on the curtains of the bed. There was a rosary left out on his dresser. He had two very intricate crucifixes and a cross mounted on the walls. If he was so devout, he could have at least left an instruction manual around to go with them. Not that she could read, but some pictures would have been handy. “I won’t, I mean—“ He must think of her as the worst kind of person in the world. More than before, considering how much he hated gypsies. “I thought I could show you not all gypsies are criminals.”  
“One. One out of God knows how many thousands of you there are. What does that prove?” he asked.  
“It proves there were enough of my people to raise me right,” she said. “My parents died when I was a baby.”  
Claude put a hand to his temples. He was going to have to end up justifying just going to sleep at night to this woman. Now he had two gypsy fights on his hands.  
“They died of measles,” she said.   
‘Thank you, Lord!’ Claude thought. For once he was glad he had nothing to do with someone being dead.  
“I was raised by a lot of my people. They’re my friends. They’re all good people and if there are enough people to raise me and all their children to be good, that should make a difference.” Esmeralda had stayed with the better of the gypsies. They were harassed a lot, but none of them were ever truly arrested, because not even Frollo’s soldiers would find a reason. It hurt them to find other gypsies stealing. Not only did the thieves make them all look bad, but they got to eat while her people, decent people, went hungry. But they didn’t change and neither did she. They were better than that.  
“And how many good people are there that raised you?” he asked. “A hundred?”  
“Um, no,” she squeaked.  
“Fifty then?” he asked. He had that cold steel voice of his, the one everyone was used to that said simply ‘I win.’  
She shook her head.  
“Twenty?”  
“More or less.”  
“Fourty-five people,” he said, as if that answered everything. “Fourty-five people died one night. You were not even born then. The first casualty of the fire was my father. He told them to get out of his shop and stop bothering the customers and they set his shop on fire that night. It claimed forty-four more people, including my commanding officer. It claimed my mother two years later when she died of grief. Since I was promoted to Judge, I have counted exactly one hundred and two accounts of unprovoked murder from gypsies alone. One person. Maybe twenty-one people. If they are truly that good, then they will be the few exceptions to go free for a while longer than the others and that is all the pity they will get. That is all the pity any of us get.” He unlocked the door. “I am leaving now. As in right now. I do not want any more of your tricks. Maybe we will talk again, but I want to be able to leave without you stopping me.”  
“Just one thing first,” she said. “How old are you? I’ve kept all your other secrets and it’s not like I’m going anywhere or that I’ll be able to tell anyone anyway.”  
He sighed. At least she was letting him go. “I am fifty-six. And there is nothing wrong with that.”  
He walked out of the room and locked the door behind him.  
‘No,’ she thought. ‘There is nothing wrong with that. Just with everything else.’


	19. Chapter 19

Frollo’s ultimatum had not gone ignored. Neither had Clopins’ insults at those who had bothered to perpetrate the crime when they refused to be the ones to return the apprentice for Esmeralda. Everyone in the gypsy camp knew that the revolution was falling apart at the seams. Some families cowered in fear while others backed up those of their overly ambitious friends. Everyone knew the situation and still they threw fuel on the fire by speaking up.   
Except one person. Gaetan had no idea what was going on. All she knew was that she would die in here, but only after a very long and merciless time. The guards screamed at her in Spanish. They threw her food at her. They let people mock her, hit her through the bars, and pelt her with trash. She’d managed to shove the rotting debris away to make a little patch clean enough to lie down on. She had only two instances of pity as a prisoner: half the time the guards were not at their posts, thinking she wasn’t worth watching; the other was that she was taken out of her cell and given a slight bit of privacy by some women to relieve herself.  
She wanted to curl up and die, but Frollo had somehow beaten and threatened into her some sort of spirit, something that refused to be killed, something that demanded at least a chance to take something else down with it.  
Her clothes had been torn off in the fight in the forest and she’d been stripped to her underwear before being thrown in her tiny, cramped prison. Her arms were still pulled behind her back and held in place by ropes around her chest and wrists. Her ankles were bound as well. She wasn’t even allowed to walk in her captivity.  
Someone began stomping around in front of the cell. She didn’t care. She didn’t even know they had been gone. She just kept staring at the wall and lying on the floor.  
She heard them open the door. She still didn’t move.  
She thought he came in to throw more garbage, maybe yell at her. She never expected a giant hand to land across her mouth and to be forced onto her back.  
Another hand grabbed her legs and unfolded them from over her chest before the man landed on top of her bodily. His weight pressing on her chest almost suffocated her, but she was more worried about her ribs breaking or her arms being crushed behind her back.  
She tried to struggle. She knew it was useless. Every bit of sense or logic told her that there was no point, but some part of her didn’t want to give up just yet. Some part of her wasn’t convinced about the bars, the trash, the days of lying in garbage. One suicidal part wanted out to lash out one last time. She tried to turn her head, but he held her down harder, threatening to break her jaw.   
He placed his free hand on her braies and she froze. “I always wondered what that gets that bastard off.”  
She wanted to close her eyes. She wanted to will herself somewhere else while this happened. But all she saw behind her eyelids was another gypsy who had grabbed her. He had torn her off her horse and nearly brought a sword down on her head, trying to split it open like chopping wood. He had murdered a child, a family, just to get to her. She never paid attention to any of it before. She thought it was just a random event. The gypsies were crazy. They were evil. It really was Hell in their secret court. Not even God could save her now.  
Her eyes shot open as she felt her tear her braies off her hips. She wanted to scream. She wanted someone who cared to hear it, even if they were just going to run and hide and pretend it never happened. But all the gypsies were like this man, like the one who found her in the alley. 

………….

Clopin had grabbed the first thing he could find, which was a chair he took out from under someone else, and smashed it down on the man who was supposed to be guarding the jail. The chair broke in half to pieces and he hit the man again as he tried to get up off the girl. The chair was nothing now but two pieces of wood in his hands.  
He tossed one away and used his free hand to grab the man and toss him out of the cell and beat him with the remaining stick while swearing at him in Andalusian. He went on for a whole five minutes before he couldn’t think up any more insults and sent the man away, throwing the last piece of the chair at his head.  
He turned to cast a quick glance at the girl. She was curled up in a silent ball, her legs held up to her chest, doing the best to cover herself. She was shaking, but she wasn’t making any noise. Clopin pleaded for his instincts to be wrong.   
He turned back to the crowd, which had been silenced by his unrepeatable screaming. “Exactly what part of ‘What we do to her, he does to Esmeralda?’ did no one understand?” Clopin screamed. “If that was too complicated, what part of ‘Pissing Frollo off is a very bad idea’ did you miss? And when did we start acting like this? To children no less? If this is what you mean by ‘Dios lo queire’ then you can all meet me in Hell! No one is to go near this cell but me and anyone who wants to change my mind can come up here and tell me to my face!”  
He took out his dagger and waited. He kept waiting. Slowly, frightened parents shoved children back inside huts, people backed away, and those who looked like they actually were going to take up his challenge exchanged glances and found themselves in a circle of people looking for encouragement and the ability to justify what had just happened and none of them had any.  
No one wanted to contest their king, but it was only a matter of time, Clopin realized.  
He’d seen chickens mate without asking, but at least they waited for the adult feathers to come in and the female could run away. Great, his people had gone from feral dogs to livestock to poultry.   
Clopin turned back to the cell. The girl was still in her little ball. She hadn’t said anything, she hadn’t even screamed since she got here. She just let people hurl whatever they felt like at her and kept quiet. It wasn’t like she had anyone who would listen to her if she did make noise, did she? Why shouldn’t she go thinking that, given the lame job he’d already done with handing her back all safe and sound?  
She wasn’t safe staying here and neither were his people. No one was safe if someone took her back, either.   
“Are you hurt?” he asked. He stepped into the cell and bent down. She was still bound by the ropes. She wasn’t going anywhere. She was an intelligent soldier. A stupid one might have tried to get away and done their best to rush headlong into a crowd after their blood without any knowledge of an escape route, but she knew from the beginning that there were too many people and that she’d be lost even if she miraculously got past them all.  
“Here, let me—“ Teeth sank into his hand and he went back to swearing in Andalusian. “Yes, I’m sure I deserved that. Can you let go now?” He tried to pull his hand away, but she ground her teeth harder on his fingers. He gave up, figuring wrestling with her was the last thing she needed at this moment. If she was distracted by trying to tear his fingers off, he’d actually have a lot less trouble helping her. Careful to keep from looking like he was doing anything, he slipped the blade under the ropes and sliced them as fast as he could, tearing the bonds around her chest and arms as well as the ones on her wrists. Her jaw slackened slightly in surprise and he quickly cut the ropes around her ankles before she started struggling, now that her hands were free. Instead of fighting him, she grabbed the hem of her undershirt and pulled it down between her legs and refocused her efforts on breaking his knuckles. Now he could try to solve that problem. He took a deep breath and hoped he was fishing in the dark with the wrong bait. “Gaetane?”  
She stopped and let go of his hand. Damnit, why did he have to be right? And what was with his kids putting his things in their mouths?  
“Gaetane, don’t worry,” he said, putting a hand on her cheek in what he hoped was a comforting, trustworthy gesture. “I’m not going to hurt you. You can trust me. It’s okay, I know Giselle—“  
She twisted around and angrily kicked him away from her. She curled up in a hateful ball and glared at him. She was silent and that unnerved him more than any sound she could have made. Even a kicked dog will growl.  
“I think I’ll give you some time alone,” he said and hurried out of the cell. He already had Frollo and every single soldier out for his blood, he didn’t need half his own court and most of his family out for it too. He didn’t have enough to go around, and that was before the addendums were added to the list.

……….

Claude’s problems were just compounding by the day. One of these days, he was going to need somewhere to put hostages. He stopped talking to Esmeralda, afraid of more ‘incidents’ but also not wanting to end up in an argument that he actually was doing his job perfectly well with someone he was probably going to have hanged anyway. He couldn’t very well lock Esmeralda up in the washroom and he didn’t need her getting anymore wrong ideas and trying to drag his mind into the same gutter. Tending to Esmeralda was worse than handling Quasimodo in his terrible twos. He had to take his important papers out of his bedroom after he found she had rearranged them. He could only access his own bedroom to retrieve fresh clothes and was reduced to sleeping in his chair. The chair had been part of his mother’s dowry and had been carved in celebration for the crusades. Just like them, it had seemed like a good idea at the time, but was an absolute failure in the end. It was a nice chair, but it wasn’t made for sleeping in. It could give dead people cramps. Esmeralda asked for water in the middle of the night, demanded things to play with, broke his hairbrush trying to use it herself, had table manners Gaetan started off with so he had to ask his cook to accommodate and got a rolling pin in the ribs before she agreed, splashed water all over the washroom floor, used up his toiletries, and asked him inane and inappropriate questions like why he didn’t want her touching his clothes or why she couldn’t brush his hair for him.  
That had been enough problems for the first two days. After that, Phobeus began to bug him. The gypsies returned to the streets, in twos and threes, and the captain started complaining that he was picking up Frollo’s habits of not trusting them even as they went to legally buy bread, something which Frollo didn’t see the problem with. After Phoebus tried to help a lost little gypsy kid, only to have it cry and send the horrified mother running up to it and call him something he was sure was very rude in Spanish, Phoebus said he was going to sit the whole situation out in his room at the barracks, even if that meant Claude wouldn’t be seeing him until next year. Claude felt it was a small godsend.  
Claude gave up on the chair after six days of three hours of sleep each and made himself a make-shift bed similar to Gaetan’s and he wondered how she could stand it, especially the first week during which she had nothing but the stone floor. Nevertheless, he fell asleep for sixteen hours, which would have been longer if he hadn’t suddenly woken up in a panic when he realized it was Sunday.   
After checking on Esmeralda—she needed to use the latrine, wanted to see Djali, was hungry, and for some reason thought he could be convinced to stay and talk if she batted at his ear with her finger, which managed to confuse him, but he pushed her back into the bedroom and crossed himself—he prepared to go see Quasimodo. He hoped God was willing to forgive his failure to show up to mass, he was doing his best and keeping a stranger well in his own house on the Sabbath; it wasn’t curing leprosy, but that wasn’t his job and besides, curing leprosy sounded a lot more enjoyable.  
Quasimodo, Gaetan, Esmeralda and practically Phoebus… why didn’t he just adopt the whole of Paris while he was at it? What difference would it make, only two of his kids ever listened to him and the ones that did were still trouble.  
He wondered what England was like this time of year. Food that was better used to clean stains from rugs, weather that looked like Lucifer vomited it up, a war made no sense however you looked at it, a country full of people with bad teeth and worse accents who took pride in syphilis and beer Phoebus wouldn’t drink. That hadn’t looked good when he was lying on a cot at Jacques’ nearly choking as he coughed up blood when suffering from the plague.  
What was wrong with the world?  
He bought a good amount of food for Quasimodo and even some wine. If it helped Phoebus temporarily, it might help the boy. Or it might help with something else, Claude mused. Quasimodo was, after all, his best trained hound and the boy had been jumping at the gate for quite some time now. It was about time he put him to some use.

…………..

“Gaetan?” Quasimodo asked, peering out from behind a post near the stairs. It was deep into the afternoon and no one had showed up today. The weather had been almost as clear as the streets from what the hunchback had seen and mass had been short. What could possibly be keeping her?  
“No, Quasimodo, it’s me,” Claude said. His knee may have been getting better, but apparently stairs were worse than a horse. That chair was looking very comfortable right now.  
“Oh, master, I have missed you!” Quasimodo said, leaving the safety of hiding behind the post and almost running to his father, but held back, seeing Claude’s face. “But, where is Gaetan?” Quasimodo contemplated Gaetan having been fired for some reason. He was sure that she was skilled enough at cleaning house, having survived the first few days, so that couldn’t possibly be it. Frollo had been off his crutches for some time now, so she hadn’t been thrown away just because he could get back to work. Besides, she had told him Frollo said two people kept the city and Phoebus in line a lot better than just one. If she hadn’t been fired, then something must have happened to her. The only thing that could make sense was that she was injured or had fallen sick, but from Frollo’s expression, it wasn’t that simple.  
Quasimodo had never seen his master in a mood such as this. He’d caused several bouts of fury himself, from wanting to leave, to missing lessons, to even hurting the man by accident by misjudging his growing strength. Frollo had shown up covered in blood and in no mood to play or even put up with blinking wrong many times. Usually anger like that was like a rock smashing a window. There was a terrifying moment as everything went flying and you had to do your best to avoid being hurt, but it only lasted a moment. After that, there was calm and mostly silence and you just picked up the pieces and tried not to hurt yourself on them. His other bad moods were improved just by Quasimodo listening to him complain about the world outside, from intricate robberies to idiot revolutionaries, and the man was happier when he left, proud that his son agreed and at least tried to understand.  
This was new. His master was not mad. He was not frustrated. He was not even depressed, as he sometimes was when he felt the world was making a bit too nice of a handbasket and couldn’t wait to go to Hell. There was a sadness he’d never seen in his father, and something worse, something scarier than Quasimodo had ever even contemplated: fear. His father was afraid. How was that even possible? He was Minister Claude Frollo. He’d been so perfect as a judge already, just like the biblical ones and rode off to battle like a righteous king of Israel, meeting enemies in battle and smiting them down as God guided those soft hands. What could possible make his father afraid? He wasn’t afraid of anything.   
“I’m so sorry Quasimodo,” Claude said, bending down and patting Quasimodo’s cheek. “But that boy will not be returning.”  
“I…yes, right, boy… I mean… Oops…” Quasimodo turned away and stepped back. He looked at his master, not able to bring himself to try and hide from Frollo for long. Quasimodo was less skilled at lying than Jacques was at cutting hair. If he could hold one in his hand, someone would end up bleeding in seconds. Claude had been skilled at detecting lies from an early age and his abilities just increased in time. Between the two men, Quasimodo would have been less obvious about his insight on Gaetan if he had given his father a soliloquy on it.  
“Ah, you know then. Come, we should sit down. A minute of fresh air would do us both some good.” Claude put a hand on Quasimodo’s deformed back and gently led the boy to the table.   
“She told me, master. She’s not in trouble over it, is she?”  
“No, Quasimodo, neither of you is in trouble over such a thing. You have kept her secret and she has kept yours.” Claude’s voice was distant, as was his gaze. He was halfway somewhere else, trying to find his way back maybe, or trying to find his way out of something. “It’s all very well; it saves a lot of explanation on my part.” Well, that part was true. And it did help. She could dump all her feminine things on the boy and leave him out entirely. That is, if she had any feminine things. She knew nothing about cooking, had hburt herself whenevery she attempted anything involving thread or yarn, hated pretty ponies, and was only slightly more knowledgeable about colors than he was. Maybe she talked about soap on occasion with the boy. “I do hope you at least enjoyed her company in the time you had together.”  
“She was my friend, master,” Quasimodo said, almost about to cry. Frollo sat him down on the stool by the table and rubbed his shoulder in sympathy as he sat down himself. It didn’t help. Frollo was acting like she had died. But that was impossible. Frollo would never let something like that happen. Things just didn’t work that way. Not with Frollo. “What… what happened, master?”  
“Those gypsies!” Frollo cried, half hugging Quasimodo. “They attacked and they took her! They have her somewhere and they know her secret! She could be cast out on to the street to die without an ounce of pity if she is found out by the people, but the gypsies? They will kill her if not worse! It is only a matter of time and it may already be too late! If only I could find where they were hiding her, I could finally bring them to justice!” He could see the gears in Quasimodo’s head turning now that he’d rearranged the machinery to work the way he wanted.  
“What if I could find them?” Quasimodo asked. “I want to try, master. Please, I would feel as if I failed both of you if I didn’t!”  
“Quasimodo, would you truly risk a world that would just as soon stone either of you for your secrets?” Claude asked, stroking a hand through Quasimodo’s hair, leading the boy to meet his glinting eyes. “Would you be able to keep both of you hidden? Would you go up against the people of Lucifer himself?”  
Claude rose and walked over to the table with Quasimodo’s figurines. “Alas, I doubt I’d ever find another like her,” he said, picking through the figurines, for a while handling the figure of Gaetan before setting in back in the pile. “Perhaps it was a mistake to send her here. You didn’t need her, after all.” He moved the figure of Quasimodo on top of one of the towers of the toy cathedral. “You’ve always been perfectly fine alone up here. You don’t need to put yourself in danger for someone else when you’re safe up here. You have your bells and you still have me.” He placed the figurine of himself on the opposite tower and ‘accidentally’ knocked it off with his sleeve as he turned back to Quasimodo, grabbing Gaetan’s figurine as he did so. “And you will always have your little figurines.” He placed the little wooden Gaetan in his son’s hands and closed the boy’s fingers over it. “After all, the gypsies can’t take either of those away from you, now can they?”  
“Master,” Quasimodo began, pausing to choke away fear and sadness. “If I left… if I tried… Would you…?”  
“My dear boy, do not worry about such trifles,” Claude said, softly petting Quasimodo’s hair. “I should go. You need time alone with your thoughts and I am sorry to bring you this news, but I felt it was best you knew. However you decide to take this, whatever you do, just remember: I will understand.”  
Quasimodo hung his head and stayed silent as his father patted his shoulder for a long time before leaving.  
Claude smiled as he silently walked down the stairs. ‘Go fetch.’


	20. Chapter 20

Clopin wondered if Frollo had kept a few tips about childrearing to himself in order to get more favors from him. For someone who seemed to hate the whole ordeal and had said he didn’t want anything from him in the first place, there was just too much evidence not to assume this was all just fun and games the minister would laugh at behind Clopin’s back about.  
Prince had found his hands could make far more trouble than tearing shiny things off people’s ears or trying to grab at their chests or hair. Instead of everything he ate either turning to energy to scream or just coming back up, food was now a fuel source for propelling himself as fast and as far as he could while adults were distracted. It wasn’t walking and it wasn’t even crawling, but his handicap only spurned him on to get into more trouble to make up for it. Not that he wasn’t slacking in his work to spit up and scream.  
Despite Prince’s intentions to explore what the world was like by seeing what was edible and what was breakable, Clopin actually found this new phase convenient. He tied a harness around the baby and took comfort in his healing ears and the fact that no one was trying to yank his hair from his scalp. All he had to do was keep the leash just too short for Prince to cause any real problems, but long enough for the baby to think he could.  
Watching one child took his mind off his other one. He had taken down a giant piece of cloth and said ‘Because I say so!’ when people complained. He tacked it up in front of the jail for a little privacy. Not just for Gaetane, but for himself too. Not only would people stop throwing whatever they felt like at her—it had taken him an hour to clean everything out and then someone decided to try and put things back the way they were in his absence—but he didn’t have to see that people like that were just a few yards from him. It also made a good deterrent for them because they never knew when he was watching her or had left momentarily.  
They hated her and he could sort of understand why. She was Frollo’s kid, a closer ally than that shiny blonde man that followed both of them around. He wasn’t too thrilled with Frollo having an apprentice himself, but even a man who cheerfully took charge of hanging people had his limits. Killing people, sure, that was fine. Killing kids, no, not unless they really started acting like Frollo and frankly his puppet looked more like Frollo than she did in her black clothes and short hair. She didn’t even have a hat.  
Clopin didn’t feel it was right to throw things at people who couldn’t get away and he certainly wasn’t a man to go around violating women no matter what their age, or even letting someone else do it.  
He might as well have done all this, though. Frollo wouldn’t really see much difference, and neither would Giselle. She’d probably never trust Prince around him again and the two would end up dead soon, given her income trouble. Esmeralda was going to be better off dead if Frollo kept true to his ultimatum and Gaetane was barely eating. Given the anger and distrust from half the gypsies, his life wasn’t going to last very long either. As much as answering to God about these poor souls seemed like a much better idea than dealing with them directly, he couldn’t just sit by and let any of it happen. He needed a plan.

……………

Even Prince, who had a barely developed sense of human beings, could sense his father’s emotional turmoil and he felt he wanted to help. He stopped exploring the basic physics and taste of the curtain and started to wail. As much as he wanted to help, he didn’t understand that his way of saying ‘this air bubble trapped in my throat hurts’ and ‘I want you to feel happier’ sounded exactly same.   
“Not you too,” Clopin said. He pulled the baby towards him by the leash and picked him up. “How come you’re quiet for Frollo and not me?” He gave Prince his hat and tried bouncing the baby on his knee when he threw it away. “What’s wrong with you, are you sick?”   
In response, Prince vomited slightly and continued to complain, though not at nerve-grating volume. Why couldn’t the adult understand that he was trying to be helpful?  
“And why do I have the opposite problem with you? I said I was sorry,” he said to Gaetane. She hadn’t said anything to him in the two days he’d been guarding her and she only ate for one. She refused to sleep under his watch, and nothing he told her kept her from jerking awake and digging her nails into her skin to keep from dozing off in his presence, even while he slept at his post.  
“You know, you’re going to inherit this hat someday,” Clopin said, retrieving the thrown object and putting it back on his head. If he survived any of this, he was going to save up to pay to have it washed thoroughly. “You’ll inherit all this too, but I don’t think you want it. The leader of a bunch of hopeless people, half of which don’t deserve this refuge and the other half too scared of the first half to do anything about them.” He turned to Gaetane again. “You could have had all this yourself. Look, I did my best to take care of Giselle and I’m still helping out when I can, even if it’s not much. I promised her I’d help her little girl and I’d be a daddy for her and the baby, too. I know I’m hardly doing a good job at any of this, but I’m trying!”  
Clopin always knew what to say around kids. It may have been the wrong thing to say, but he said it. During one of his shows about Frollo’s Wild Ride, a little boy burst into tears just when the story was getting good. He told the kid he was interrupting, only for the boy to start arguing that Frollo was nice. Clopin demanded to know what the hell the boy was talking about only to be told that the boy’s father had been a guard and had been recently killed. Frollo had stopped by in the middle of the night to tell the boy’s mother and to offer condolences and left the two with compensation and a promise of a pension and saying the man was good soldier. The boy didn’t see how his father could work for someone evil, and the boy’s own story had the whole audience sobbing. Clopin’s attempts to comfort the children not only didn’t work, but got him arrested for attempted child abduction. The whole incident had actually made him care for Frollo a lot less, but at least those kids did something when he spoke to them. Gaetane barely blinked at him.  
“Here, you want to talk to your baby brother?” Clopin asked, holding Prince up by the bars.  
Prince recoiled and started to sob at being handed to such a frightening stranger. She was dark and angry and was probably going to eat him.  
Gaetane didn’t blink and just glared at Clopin, watching him the way a caged animal waits for someone to be stupid enough to feed them their finger.  
“Why am I so much worse at this than a guy who thinks drowning kids is the answer?” Clopin asked, setting Prince on the ground.  
“Here, you want to talk to the puppet?” He waved his puppet in front of her, making it clap. “He likes you.”  
No reaction. Well, Prince had been afraid of them and had tried to attack it in self-defense; at least she wasn’t doing that. “Here, I’ve got one of Frollo,” he said, trying with his other puppet. “I’ll paint a smile on him if you just say something. Anything. I don’t care what it is, just say something.”  
“I have to pee,” Gaetane whispered.  
“Well, that’s technically something,” Clopin admitted. He sighed. “I’ll go talk to someone.”

…………………….

Clopin was pretty sure someone was going to kill him for all this. Instead of trying to figure out how not to die, he went over his list of enemies and wondered how to keep the number of victims down to just him and of those, who it would be a better way to go by.  
Frollo was out; he’d kill half of Paris over this. No going to him no matter what his parenting skills were like.  
However, keeping Gaetane here wasn’t going to solve anything either. People were getting more and more restless with the soldiers everywhere. He was back to having to break up fights, which ranged from hating him to hating other people over their opinions of him to just being mad in general and every time he tried to step in and either help everyone talk it over or simply threaten everyone involved, they all united against him for not having solved anything yet. Whatever he invoked in people, trust, fear, a scapegoat, was waning and he couldn’t take on several thousand people, especially with his hands full of kids.  
Good, innocent gypsies were going to die if he took a side in this backwards, moronic version of a civil war. He couldn’t see them, but they were there. He knew it. He hoped it. But they didn’t trust him. They didn’t want him on their side and they didn’t even want to be a side at all. They weren’t an option and they weren’t going to do anything anyway.  
If neither side would help, he’d have to go to a third party. Who else did he have? And how could he get Esmeralda out of the picture?  
Giselle could only hold on to the children for so long, but she was a bit more preferable to get killed by. At least he’d finally fulfill his promise of finding her daughter for her. Wait, Giselle could fix all this. She was French! Giselle could drop her off, the kid could make something up about escaping and if she didn’t, Giselle would already have beaten Frollo to killing him by that time anyway. That kept the casualties to him, Giselle and Prince. Still not good. What he needed was someone to give Prince to. Who did he know who was good at randomly rescuing babies? He had to hurry, Monday night had checked out of work and Tuesday morning had begun to fill in. Who was even awake in the middle of the night who’d be concerned about the welfare of some random gypsy baby?

………………

Gaetane scrambled awake before Clopin had pushed the curtain aside. Prince was in his arms, asleep and quiet for the first time she’d even seen the baby like that.  
Clopin was quiet. He faced Gaetane, but he wasn’t paying much attention. He was waiting for something to happen and he was more concerned Prince would wake up and holler or someone outside would do something. His whole court was sleeping and he hoped it was more like his son than his daughter, fast asleep and undisturbable. “You know, some reaction would be nice,” he said.  
Nothing happened. He wasn’t surprised.  
“Look, this has gone on way too long. None of this should have happened and I’m sorry and I know you’re not going to be too happy with me after this no matter what. If you want to go back to Frollo for God knows why, you can. You can have me arrested and tortured and killed for all I care.” He waited.  
She blinked.  
“Well, say something!”  
Nothing happened.  
“Fine. I can understand. You don’t have to talk to me and you’re certainly not going to like me anytime soon, but I need you to trust me. You can hate me all you want, but I just need you to go along with me for about an hour and then you’re free. I’m not going to hurt you and you can watch Giselle kill me if that makes you feel any better.”  
For a long while, nothing happened, but eventually Gaetane gave a short nod.  
Clopin sighed in relief. “I’m going to go do something really, really stupid. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Please don’t change your mind in the meantime.”  
“I won’t,” she whispered.  
“Wow,” he muttered before leaving. He hoped there wasn’t anything he hadn’t taken into consideration.

……………

Getting up to the surface of Paris, even traversing one of the less-used tunnels of the court, had taken a lot longer than Clopin remembered. Gaetane did well on her part. She let him slip a bag over her head and lead her out. She never tried to run away or free herself and didn’t even stray from him leading her about or turning her around to make sure she couldn’t track her way back down. It was depressing. She wasn’t doing this to get out, she was doing this out of some sort of resignation. If she was doing this because she wanted something, it was just for the chance to stand up and walk, not because she wanted freedom. She probably didn’t think she’d get it.  
He walked her a few blocks away from where they’d come up and took the bag off her head. “Come on,” he whispered. “You can’t get caught looking like that.” He pulled her into some shadows and waited before slipping past a soldier who turned out to be asleep. He picked up some pebbles from the street. He distracted two more soldiers by throwing the pebbles past them, making sure to hit something that made a loud noise when the stones hit.   
He soon slipped into an alley Gaetane recognized even in the moonless, starless dark.  
“Giselle!” he whispered, throwing a pebble at the side of the brothel near her room. “Giselle, wake up!”  
A hand pushed a piece of cloth from a hole in the wall that acted as a window, and then disappeared. Whatever happened next, one way or another, Clopin was glad it was all over.

……….

Gaetane herself didn’t think she’d survive very long. She doubted Frollo would take her back. She was sure she’d failed and he didn’t want anything to do with her anymore. She just wanted out of that world full of gypsies. She didn’t even like this gypsy much, even if his words earlier did sound familiar.   
She had never contemplated going back to her mother. She had thought it was better off if she just disappeared from the woman. Did her mother really miss her? What did it matter, her mother couldn’t feed her. Her mother probably couldn’t hide her either. Still, one chance to see her again, just one smile before she had to run off and disappear on the streets again would be wonderful. She missed her mother, even when she had real food and a warm bed and knew what it was like to hold real money in her hands. If only the only way to get to her mother wasn’t through this man.  
Whoever he was, he was barely paying attention to her. He had his hand on her wrist, but he was waiting for Gisselle to come down the stairs and out the door of the brothel. He was listening for soldiers. No doubt they couldn’t see them in the darkness.  
Someone else could see them though, as they hid right behind them.  
The gypsy was struck in the head and knocked to the ground by someone’s fist. The attacker was right next to Gaetane and she never saw him. She backed away as quietly as she could.   
All could see was a lumpy shadow turning toward her. They had seen her. They knew everything now. They were going to come after her any second now.   
She wanted to scream, but then everyone would know. She might be able to get away from one stranger, but not the entire army.  
“Gaetan!” the stranger yelled, grabbing the man—just another shadow—and threw him back as he tried to go after her. “It’s me, Quasimodo.”  
She grabbed her undershirt and pulled it down as far as it would go. He couldn’t see her like this. Not him. She was disgusting. She was pathetic. She was worthless. She was worse than trash. She couldn’t face him like this, barely dressed, smelling of garbage and squalor, a shivering, sickening wreck.  
He took a step closer to her and she panicked, taking no notice of a silvery flash in the dark. “Don’t!” she yelled.  
There was only one thing she could do, one thing she’d wanted to do since she’d been attacked and she finally had the chance.  
She ran. She didn’t care where, so long as there was no one else.  
There were screams behind her, followed by shouts from soldiers. She leapt over a gate between two houses and pressed up against the walls as they ran with torches past her.  
She waited. She hoped. She prayed. They passed her without notice and she took off again. There was only one place for her to go, one person she could trust, one person she didn’t care about them seeing her this way. 

………………

The brothel was near the barracks, though if asked, everyone would say they never noticed or deny it flat out. Anyone in Gaetane’s way had run to the battle, leaving the few streets to traverse bare and empty. Even the dogs and rats had been frightened away. Only a hundred feet away and she could hide from everyone, even someone who had risked his life to rescue her. But she couldn’t go back. She couldn’t save him.  
They were going to kill him and it was all her fault. No, there was still a chance. Phoebus could help. He always wanted to help. She was just some scared, defenseless little girl to him and she actually felt like one now. He wasn’t as comforting as Quasimodo would be, but his viewpoint of her wouldn’t change. In truth, she wasn’t as concerned about what he thought of her. He wasn’t really close; he just wanted to share his opinions, not any real part of his life. He wasn’t someone she’d feel so worried about falling apart in front of. She needed his little fantasy where the world would stop and hold still while you were scared over your own stupidity.  
No one was about around the barracks, but someone would be reporting to him soon. She ran to his door and pounded on it, praying he’d answer before anyone else heard her.   
The door opened slightly and she threw herself inside, slamming into him and nearly knocking him over.  
“Would people let me put something on before—Gaetan?” he asked, pushing her back before he noticed who she was.   
She hugged herself tightly, wondering if even he would see some reason to dislike her. He seemed mad.   
He sighed and closed the door. “We’ve got to get you back to—“ Yes, waking Frollo up at this time of night and then shoving a traumatized little girl into his arms and taking away the one thing that kept him from tearing up the foundations of Paris was a brilliant idea. “Never mind. That’s not a good idea, just now. What happened--?” Bad move there. He didn’t need to know what happened and it was pretty damn obvious anyway. He really wanted to be spared any details, especially while wearing barely any clothes and having had almost as little sleep. “Let me think about this logically.”  
He put his hand to his temples. His head hurt. His eyes hurt. He had to think. Frollo didn’t know what to do. It was up to him to come up with something. She was depending on him to figure things out. He never realized how blank his mind was until now. Frollo was right. Why was Frollo right? That wasn’t how things should work. But he wasn’t coming up with anything himself and there was no one else to go to. Why couldn’t he have stayed with the war?  
“That’s not working either,” he said.  
Gaetan was calming down. He wasn’t mad at her directly and wasn’t going to take it out on anything anytime soon. Seeing her relax slightly made Phoebus feel better and the two stood there in mutual confusion. The immediate danger was gone, but one of them had to think of something eventually.  
“Can you pretend I didn’t just say a bunch of stupid things and stay here and try to feel a bit better?” he asked.  
She nodded.  
“I’m going to go tell Frollo I found you before he kills someone. Long story.”  
“Don’t tell him where I am, please!” she exclaimed.  
“What?” he asked. And he thought the war he left was a big pile of crazy ideas. “And calm down. I won’t. Just try to be kinda quiet.” This could get a lot crazier really fast.  
“He was right! The Court of Miracles does exist!” she said.  
Phoebus knew someday he’d have to deal with a barely dressed girl almost in tears yelling at him while he was in his underwear late at night, but this wasn’t how he’d pictured it.  
“I hate it! It’s a horrible place! But I don’t know where it is! I’m sorry!”  
“You’re sorry?” Phoebus asked. His head hurt worse.  
“Ask him… tell him Philemon 14.”  
“I’ll try to remember all that, don’t worry,” he said. At the moment he was so tired he needed help remembering his own name. “You can hang out here for a while. I won’t tell him where you are until I know what he’s going to do.” By ‘know’ he meant ‘agree with after he explains it in very tiny words.’ This must be what Frollo was going through. He never thought he’d feel sympathy for than man and he’d spent only a few moments with her in his room. “Just do me a big favor.” He hoped he wasn’t going to regret his choice of words. “Find my pants for me, please.”


End file.
